Columbia  ®nit)f  m'tp 

THE  LIBRARIES 


M 


ONE  WORLD  AT  A  TIME 


ONE  WORLD  AT  A  TIME 

A  CONTRIBUTION  TO 

THE  INCENTIVES  OF  LIFE 


BY 
THOMAS  R.  SLICER 


How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living  !  how  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses  for  ever  in  joy  ! 

Browning's  Saul 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  &  LONDON 
Cbe  Iknicl^erbocl^er  ipiess 

1902 


Copyright,  igo2 

BV 

THOMAS  R.  SLICER 


C\V 


.1 


/ 


Ube  ftntcftcrbocfier  press,  IRew  ffiorft 


A  FOREWORD  TO  THE  READER 

THIS  book  is  not  written  for  people  who 
are  satisfied  either  with  their  reHgious 
opinions  or  with  their  doubt  of  other  people's 
religious  opinions.  It  is  sent  out  as  a  con- 
tribution to  the  incentives  of  life  for  those  who 
feel  that  life  is  not  very  much  worth  while, 
and  who,  in  consequence,  are  looking  forward 
to  another  life,  while  missing  the  joy  of  this  ;  or 
else,  are  dealing  in  a  sluggish  way  with  the  or- 
dinary experiences  of  life,  not  much  caring 
whether  it  is  worth  while  now  or  anything  is 
to  follow.  The  writer  believes  that  life  is  very 
much  worth  while  ;  that  a  beautiful  life  may 
be  lived  in  God's  orood  world  on  terms  con- 
sistent  with  self-respect,  and  increasingly  satis- 
fying as  life  unfolds  and  the  beauty  of  God's 
good  world  is  more  and  more  borne  in  upon 
the  mind  and  heart. 

Of  course,  the  book  is  written  from  the 
standpoint  of  a  believer  in  the  good  news  of 
God  which  the  Unitarian  faith  announces ; 
but  it  is  far  more  interesting  to  think  of  the 


323415 


vi  A  Foreword  to  the  Reader 

multitude  of  those  who  hold  this  faith  without 
knowing  it,  than  it  is  to  imagine  that  any  addi- 
tions shall  be  made  to  Unitarianism  by  afresh 
accession  of  disciples  because  of  anything  that 
appears  here.  There  are  in  America  about 
five  hundred  Unitarian  churches ;  but  there 
are  so  many  unconfessed  and  unconscious 
Unitarians  in  all  the  churches  and  outside  of 
all  the  churches  that,  if  a  census  should  be  taken, 
the  way  of  looking  at  life  that  is  called  Uni- 
tarian would  probably  have  a  larger  constitu- 
ency than  any  of  the  so-called  evangelical 
faiths. 

It  is  in  this  conviction  that  this  appeal  is 
made  to  the  reader.  It  is  not  an  appeal  in  the 
interest  of  a  body  of  doctrine,  but  of  a  way  of 
looking^  at  life.  The  author  has  often  been 
asked  by  persons  curious  as  to  the  working  of 
the  human  mind,  why  it  is  that,  with  a  long 
ancestry  of  the  ministry,  called  evangelical,  be- 
hind him,  he  thought  it  worth  while  twenty 
years  ago  to  separate  himself  from  the  com- 
munion of  the  orthodox  churches  and  start 
again  in  the  ministry  of  a  free  faith.  This 
book  is  the  answer  to  many  such  questions. 
These  questions  are  not  construed  as  personal 
to  the  writer,  but  as  due  to  a  natural  curiosity 
and  to  real  interest  in  the  state  of  mind  of  one 


A  Foreword  to  the  Reader         vii 

who,  being  upon  what  seemed  to  be  a  perfectly- 
safe  saiHng  craft,  preferred  to  go  overboard 
and  swim  ashore.  It  is  hoped  that  proof  is 
given  here  of  what  was  found  on  landing  ;  and 
since  the  world  grows  increasingly  beautiful, 
and  life  adds  evermore  to  its  charm,  the  author 
is  bold  to  address  you  directly  in  the  hope 
that  if  the  aspect  of  life  is  to  you  pale  and  in- 
effectual, it  may  flush  with  new  feeling ;  if  the 
uncertainties  of  the  mind  are  burdensome,  they 
may  be  reassured  ;  and  if  in  a  lonely  and  un- 
befriended  way  you  have  been  working  out 
for  yourself  a  philosophy  of  life  in  terms  of  a 
freer  faith  and  larger  hope,  it  may  be  seen 
here  that  there  is  a  great  company  who  find 
in  that  freer  faith  and  larger  hope  an  illumina- 
tion and  joy. 

The  title,  "One  World  at  a  Time,"  is  not  in 
any  sense  to  be  construed  negatively.  It  af- 
firms "  the  life  that  now  is,"  in  the  faith  that  if 
the  life  that  now  is  can  be  made  strong  and 
gracious  and  full  of  delight,  the  suggestion 
that  it  shall  ever  end  will  be  the  last  one  the 
mind  can  be  brought  to  entertain.  It  is  good 
to  be  alive  ;  but  that  it  may  seem  as  good  as 
it  ought,  it  is  important  to  focus  the  interest  of 
life  well  in  the  foreground  and  near  the  ex- 
perience of  to-day.      It  is  hoped  that  no  one 


viii        A  Foreword  to  the  Reader 

will  be  disturbed  by  these  pages  to  the  hurt  of 
his  peace ;  but  it  is  necessary  for  the  truth  to 
be  told  always  (the  truth  as  it  is  understood 
by  him  who  speaks),  and  it  is  necessary  for  one 
to  be  sufficiently  disturbed  to  be  awake,  in 
order  to  hear  it. 

Thomas  R.  Slicer. 


Church  of  All  Souls, 

New  York. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  FAGS 

I. — The  Sceptic i 

II. — The  Agnostic 24 

III. — The  Believer 47 

IV. — From   the   Sermon   on  the   Mount  to 

THE  NiCENE  Creed         ....  73 

V. — Why  do  Christians  Differ?  .         .119 

VI. — What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ  ?       .  137 

VII. — "A  Cold  AND  Intellectual  Religion"  164 

VIII. — "A  Difficult  Religion  "...  181 

IX. — Does  Unitarianism  "  Pull  Down   and 

not  Build  Up  "  ?         .         .         .         .  200 

X. — What  has  been  Built  Up  .         .         .  218 

XI. — How  Religion  may  be  Taught     .         .  234 

XII. — The  Passage  from  Traditional  to  Per- 
sonal Religion    ,         ,         ,         .         .  254 


ONE  WORLD  AT  A  TIME 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  SCEPTIC 

THE  man  who  never  had  a  doubt  never  had 
a  mind.  Given  a  mind,  a  doubt  must  at 
some  time  or  other  invade  it,  for  the  reason 
that  the  sceptic  is  the  inquirer.  We  do  not 
inquire  as  to  that  we  already  know — we  in- 
quire where  we  are  in  doubt.  The  inquirer's 
business  is  to  find  things  out ;  and  for  the 
most  part,  he  finds  things  out  for  the  other 
man  who  does  not  care  to  find  them  out.  The 
result  is  that  two  classes  have  been  concerned 
with  the  bettering  of  the  human  mind  in  its 
attitude  toward  the  greatest  realities, — the 
sceptic,  who  has  kept  the  air  clear  about  the 
fires  of  devotion,  and  the  mystic,  who  has  fed 
the  fires  with  fresh  fuel  that  they  may  flame. 
These  two, — the  one  who  provides  the  atmo- 
sphere of  crystalline  clearness  of  inquiry  ;  the 


2  One  World  at  a  Time 

other  who  provides  the  sacrifices  upon  the 
altars  of  devotion, — these  two  have  been  most 
concerned  with  the  progress  of  religious 
thought. 

The  sceptic  is  the  inquirer.  His  inquiry 
addresses  itself  to  three  distinct  subjects. 
For  instance,  he  is  conscious  of  himself.  He 
is  a  being.  Naturally,  unless  he  is  content 
simply  to  accept  his  animal  sensations,  he  has 
to  inquire  what  that  being  is.  He  is  placed 
as  a  being  under  conditions  of  life,  and  unless 
he  is  content  simply  to  stay  where  he  dropped, 
he  has  to  inquire  what  those  conditions  are, 
and  whether  they  can  be  bettered.  He  is  con- 
scious of  himself  and  his  environment.  He 
has  a  third  question  pressing  upon  his  atten- 
tion. It  is  the  question.  What  is  to  become 
of  me?  He  wants  to  know  whether  he  is  to 
be  snuffed  out  like  a  candle,  never  to  be  re- 
lighted ;  he  wants  to  know  whether  there  is 
any  other  world  ;  he  wants  to  know  what  the 
conditions  are  that  now  guarantee  to  him  a 
hold  on  life  that  cannot  be  killed.  He  wants 
to  know  these  things.  So,  the  sceptic,  if  he 
has  a  mind  ;  if  he  is  not  simply  a  doubting 
machine.  There  are  intellectual  outfits  that 
seem  not  to  be  minds  ;  they  are  mere  inter- 
rogation points ;  if  you  were  to  take  a  magni- 


The  Sceptic  3 

fylng  glass  of  great  power  and  take  off  the 
skull-cap  over  the  brain  of  that  kind  of  man,  I 
suppose  you  would  find  the  grey  matter  of  his 
brain  covered  over  with  little  interrogation 
points  ;  and  they  would  be  so  knitted  together 
that  they  would  have  taken  the  place  of  the 
free  matter  in  his  brain.  Your  chronic  doubter 
is  like  the  chronic  complainer.  He  asks  ques- 
tions for  ever  as  the  other  man  sighs  and  groans 
for  ever.  But  the  real  sceptic — the  man  who 
is  a  real  inquirer,  who  "  wants  to  know,"  as 
the  Yankees  say — is  out  on  a  voyage  of  dis- 
covery ;  he  perhaps  does  not  know  whither  his 
ship  is  going,  because  we  sail  the  sea  of  life 
under  sealed  orders,  and  get  far  out  into  the 
deep  before  we  realise  which  way  we  are  head- 
ing, and  what  our  destiny  is  ;  presently  we 
pass  over  some  degree  of  latitude  or  longitude 
that  indicates  whether  we  are  going  north  or 
south  or  east  or  west  and  whither  our  general 
direction  is  likely  to  take  us ;  but  if  he  is  a 
real  voyager,  he  is  more  concerned  with  the 
ship  than  he  is  with  the  destination.  He 
understands,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  anchor 
is  not  the  whole  equipment  of  a  ship.  There 
are  people  who  continually  say  to  you,  "  Why 
do  you  go  on  asking  questions,  inquiring,  rais- 
ing these  doubts  ? "     We  do  not  raise  them  ; 


4  One  World  at  a  Time 

they  are  raised  in  us  by  the  very  condition  of 
things  that  confronts  us,  whether  in  ourselves, 
our  environment,  or  our  destiny.  We  are  told 
if  we  go  on  raising  these  doubts,  entering  into 
inquiry,  we  will  lose  our  moorings  !  Think 
of  that  being  said  of  a  full-rigged  ship  !  Lose 
its  moorings !  That  is  the  thing  it  means  to 
do.  It  means  to  have  its  anchor  up  and  sails 
spread  and  helm  held  with  a  steady  hand,  its 
compass  true  and  its  bow  cutting  the  sea  be- 
fore it  as  it  goes.  That  is  the  description  of 
a  ship  that  is  on  the  business  that  belongs  to 
the  great  deep.  Lose  its  moorings !  There 
are  ships  that  never  have  lost  their  moorings 
in  years,  and  the  scum  hangs  on  their  sides 
and  barnacles  have  gathered  on  their  bottoms, 
and  their  copper  is  eaten  through,  and  their 
timbers  are  rotten.  They  have  not  a  sail  that 
is  not  mildewed.  They  have  not  a  chart  that 
is  not  a  hundred  years  old.  They  have  not  a 
compass  that  will  stand  the  slightest  presence 
of  any  deflecting  agency  near  it.  That  is  the 
condition  of  a  water-logged  human  mind. 
Now  the  sceptic  is  not  always  wise — I  shall 
not  defend  him  under  all  conditions  ;  but  I  say 
that  the  sceptic  is  an  essential  element  in  hu- 
man society,  and  his  business  is  to  inquire  and 
to  have  it  out  with  himself,  with  his  environ- 


The  Sceptic  5 

ment,  and  with  the  questions  of  his  day.  Keep 
those  three  things  in  view,  if  you  please,  while 
I  am  trying  to  outline  the  condition  of  the 
mind  that  I  am  now  describing. 

For  instance,  the  inquirer  wants  to  know,  as 
to  his  being,  whether  he  is  a  mechanism  or 
whether  he  is  a  spirit.  You  have  to  determine 
whether  you  are  a  body  carrying  around  a 
soul,  as  Emerson  says,  "  like  a  fire  in  a  pan," 
or  whether  you  are  a  soul  equipped  with  a 
body  for  the  holiest  uses.  That  is  the  ques- 
tion that  is  before  you  as  to  your  being.  You 
have  to  determine  whether  man  has  a  body 
and  himself  is  a  spirit ;  or  whether  man  is  a 
body  without  a  spirit.  For  practical  purposes 
you  can  determine  that.  "  The  body  without 
a  spirit  is  a  corpse.  The  spirit  without  a  body 
is  a  ghost."  It  is  the  combination  that  makes 
a  man.  But  when  you  have  said  that  you  have 
only  said  an  epigrammatic  thing.  The  prob- 
lem still  arises.  What  is  due  to  each  of  these  ? 
Shall  I  put  all  my  forces  upon  the  spiritual  life 
and  live  as  a  spirit  should  ;  or  shall  I  put  all 
my  weight  upon  the  bodily  life  and  live  as  an 
animal  must  live  ?  For  the  fact  is,  the  peace 
of  life  and  the  power  of  life  depend  upon  the 
place  we  give  these  two  elements  of  our  being. 
Given  the  body  as  the  sum  of  our  concern,  you 


6  One  World  at  a  Time 

can  grow  a  brute  that  will  be  a  splendid  model 
for  a  sculptor,  but  he  would  not  make  a  nurse 
for  a  sick  child.  Given  the  whole  emphasis 
laid  upon  the  spirit  and  the  body  neglected, 
you  get  what  would  serve  as  a  significant  spe- 
cimen in  morbid  anatomy.  The  probability  is 
that  he  will  have  visions  of  the  right  that  the 
brutal  man  never  had,  but  the  difficulty  with 
him  is  he  will  not  have  locomotive  power 
enough  to  carry  his  vision  around.  So  you 
see  the  real  business  of  life  for  the  sceptic  is  to 
inquire  what  he  owes  his  body  and  his  spirit ; 
and,  since  he  is  made  up  of  these  two  elements, 
to  live  his  life  on  terms  that  will  bring  the  best 
union  between  the  two. 

First,  his  being.  The  sceptic  has  to  inquire 
what  he  shall  do  with  it.  Now  the  problem 
having  been  set,  how  much  he  owes  his  flesh 
and  how  much  he  owes  his  spirit ;  having  de- 
termined, perhaps,  as  Browning  said,  "  that 
flesh  helps  soul,"  the  sceptic  has  to  inquire 
how  he  can  get  the  best  out  of  himself. 
For  the  fact  is,  the  business  of  life  is  the 
investing  ourselves  at  the  highest  rate  of 
interest.  One  man  takes  it  in  terms  of  work, 
another  man  in  terms  of  joy,  another  man  in 
terms  of  neither  work  nor  joy,  but  just  plain, 
unadulterated    worry.       He    joins    a    "  Don't 


The  Sceptic  7 

Worry"  Club,  and  then  has  nervous  prostra- 
tion. The  trouble  was  not  with  the  club  ;  it 
was  with  the  applicant  who  went  to  join  it. 
He  had  fallen  into  a  chronic  condition  of 
nerves.  Everything  hit  them  on  the  ends  and 
nothing  laterally.  Now  nerves  played  on  lat- 
erally will  make  music  like  any  other  stringed 
instrument.  But  with  the  irritated  ends  ex- 
posed from  the  finger-tips  to  the  soles  of  the 
feet, — a  man  in  that  condition  is  only  fit  to  be 
wrapped  in  cotton  and  taken  care  of  by  some 
good  woman. 

I  hope  to  prove  to  you  before  I  get  through, 
at  least  in  a  sufficiently  conclusive  way  to  make 
a  working-theory,  that  the  business  of  religion 
is  to  add  zest  to  life.  If  it  does  not  do  that  it 
does  not  do  much.  If  you  have  only  enough 
religion  to  be  thoroughly  miserable  you  had 
better  get  rid  of  the  little  that  you  have,  and 
start  in  business  again  with  better  capital  for 
which  there  is  a  fairer  market.  The  sceptic's 
inquiry  is,  How  can  I  make  the  most  out  of 
myself  ?  How  put  myself  to  the  highest  uses  ? 
So  when  we  deal  with  the  being  of  man,  we 
deal  with  it  in  the  attitude  of  scepticism.  If 
we  do  not  do  this  we  shall  simply  sink  into  a 
flaccid  and  pulseless  condition  which  will  miss 
the  very  joy  of  life. 


8  One  World  at  a  Time 

But  the  sceptic  also  has  to  do,  as  I  have 
said,  with  his  place  in  life.  He  has  to  inquire 
whether  it  is  a  fit  place  ;  whether  the  environ- 
ment is  right.  Let  me  quote  to  you  a  saying 
of  Herbert  Spencer,  which  is  for  its  purpose 
as  good  scripture  as  that  which  was  written 
eighteen  hundred  or  two  thousand  years  ago. 
Herbert  Spencer  says,  "If  there  were  no 
changes  in  the  environment  except  such  as 
there  were  adapted  changes  to  meet  in  the 
thing  environed,  that  would  be  eternal  peace 
and  eternal  life."  That  is  true.  That  is,  if 
you  could  build  up  tissue  as  fast  as  it  broke 
down,  you  would  have  constant  being ;  if  you 
could  feed  in  fuel  as  fast  as  you  exhausted  it, 
in  running  a  machine,  you  would  have  per- 
petual motion.  For  instance,  mechanics  know 
that  on  every  machine  sit  two  little  sprites, 
one  Rust  and  the  other  Friction.  Rust  says 
to  the  machine,  "If  you  stop  I  will  eat  you 
up."  Friction  says,  "  If  you  keep  going  I  will 
wear  you  out."  That  is  exactly  what  happens 
in  the  human  creature.  His  study  is  to  get 
himself  into  such  relation  to  his  environment 
that  he  can  run  at  the  greatest  speed  without 
loss  of  structure,  without  a  breaking  down 
of  the  mechanism  ;  or  rest  in  most  complete 
quietude    without    danger    of     rusting     out. 


The  Sceptic  9 

That    is   what   we    mean    by    adjustment    to 
environment. 

What  happens  in  the  Church  as  the  resuh  of 
this?  In  the  Church  men  grow  restless  under 
conditions  of  their  birth  and  training,  and 
they  begin  to  move  uneasily,  just  as  birds  do  in 
the  nest  when  they  feel  their  wing-feathers  com- 
ing. The  bird  knows  perfectly  well  that  he 
does  not  belongr  in  the  nest  for  ever.  He  sees 
the  flitting  of  other  birds  full-fledged  upon  the 
wing.  The  little  thing  that  was  hatched  in 
the  nest  chipped  its  shell  and  was  a  most  out- 
rageous looking  thing  when  it  came  into  the 
world.  It  had  no  feathers  ;  it  was  just  a  little 
blob  of  meat ;  it  never  suspected  it  would  ever 
sing.  There  it  is  in  the  nest ;  but  there  comes 
a  time  when  the  pin-feathers  begin  to  grow. 
The  longer  feathers  follow.  Then  the  wings 
begin  to  get  a  little  plumage  upon  them,  and 
finally  are  covered.  Then  there  comes  a  day 
when  it  sits  on  the  edge  of  the  nest  and  falls 
out,  but  it  does  not  do  that  many  times.  The 
mother  finds  it  on  the  ground  —  this  little 
helpless  thing,  scared  because  it  has  fallen 
out  of  the  nest.  She  encourages  it  to  hop  a 
little,  to  flutter  its  wings  a  little,  until  pre- 
sently it  gets  upon  the  wing  and  goes  from 
twig    to    twig — to    go    back    into    the    nest  ? 


lo  One  World  at  a  Time 

Never,  Not  until  next  year  when  it  has  a 
brood  of  its  own  and  eggs  to  sit  upon  and 
song-birds  to  hatch  out.  Next  year  it  will  go 
into  some  other  nest  that  it  has  made ;  but  for 
this  year  it  is  on  the  wing.  That  is  the  con- 
dition of  the  sceptic  who  finds  himself  born 
into  a  set  of  beliefs  that  he  cannot  possibly 
hold,  if  he  would  fly.  Now  he  simply  tumbles 
out  of  the  nest  and  wallows  around  in  the  dust 
at  the  foot  of  the  tree.  The  fall  from  the  nest 
was  because  he  did  not  understand  flight ; 
and  you  and  I  in  shifting  our  relations  to  the 
things  we  have  been  taught  get  many  a  fall 
and  bruise  by  it.  God  knows  how  sore  we 
are  some  days  when  we  have  been  beaten 
down  below  the  point  of  faith  and  hope,  and 
feel  as  if  **  the  heavens  were  rolled  together 
like  a  scroll  to  be  unread  for  ever."  Let  him 
not  disturb  himself,  this  fledgling  of  the  nest 
of  inherited  belief.  There  shall  come  a  day 
when,  by  the  example  of  those  that  have 
learned  flight  before  him,  and  encouraged  by 
those  that  have  learned  to  sing  that  were  in 
their  nests  before  him,  he  shall  flutter  his 
wings  and  lift  himself,  and  know  the  beautiful 
and  splendid  experience  of  being,  not  a  bird 
on  the  ground,  but  a  bird  in  the  air.  You 
remember  those  lines  of  Victor  Hugo  : 


The  Sceptic  ii 

"  Let  us  be  like  a  bird,  a  moment  lighted 
Upon  a  twig  that  swings  ; 
He  feels  it  sway  ;  but  sings  on  unaffrighted, 
Knowing  he  has  his  wings  !  " 

That  is  the  whole  story.  The  sceptic  that 
only  knows  how  to  fall  out  of  the  nest  has  not 
learned  much.  He  must  learn  how  to  fly  in 
his  native  element. 

So  with  society.  People  who  are  busy  with 
the  work  of  life  complain  that,  they  are  not 
satisfied  with  their  surroundings.  They  are 
sceptical  as  to  their  environment.  You  say 
you  think  Lessing  was  wrong  when  he  In- 
sisted that  this  was  the  best  possible  world. 
Being  a  true  sceptic,  you  say  Instead,  This  Is 
the  best  possible  world  up  to  date,  but  "  to- 
morrow Is  another  day."  It  Is  another  day, 
and  If  the  world  does  not  rise  to  meet  It,  then 
It  Is  not  the  best  possible  world  ;  for  every  day 
must  bring  not  only  Its  discontent,  but  Its 
betterment.  It  Is  the  business  of  the  Inquirer 
to  see  to  It  that  he  fits  the  environment  of  the 
day  so  well  that,  like  the  beetle  whose  shell 
you  find  upon  the  trunk  of  the  tree,  he  shall 
burst  It  and  find  wings.  That  is  the  business 
of  life  —  growing  to  your  environment,  and 
then  changing  It  by  the  expansion  of  the 
human  mind.      I  have  very  little  concern  with 


12  One  World  at  a  Time 

discontent  upon  the  part  of  those  who  are  dis- 
contented with  other  men's  discontent.  I  say 
that  the  struggle  of  soul  that  comes  to  the 
social  state  is  the  salvation  of  that  social 
state — that  there  is  nothing  so  bad  for  the 
great  mass  of  men  and  women  as  to  be  pulse- 
less, content,  sordid,  mere  lumps  of  humanity, 
dropped  where  they  fall,  and  content  to  stay 
where  they  drop.  There  is  a  divine  discon- 
tent moving  in  every  great  nation's  heart,  by 
virtue  of  which  it  becomes  a  greater  nation  ; 
in  the  heart  of  every  social  state,  by  which  the 
social  state  is  bettered  ;  and  the  business  of 
the  sceptic  is  to  find  the  conditions  under 
which  he  lives,  and  to  make  them  better.  For 
instance  :  The  Tenement-House  Commission, 
studying  conditions  of  city  life  among  the  poor, 
convicts  the  Building  Department  of  the  city 
of  neglect  and  violation  of  law.  Do  you 
suppose  it  was  the  business  of  the  Tenement- 
House  Commission  to  do  that  ?  It  was  their 
opportunity.  It  was  their  duty.  But  the  busi- 
ness lay  with  the  tenant.  He  should  have 
been  discontented  to  have  an  air-shaft  that 
substituted  inches  for  feet.  He  should  have 
been  discontented  to  have  cubic  feet  of  space 
insufficient  for  the  breathing  of  God's  good 
air.     He  should  have  been  discontented  to  live 


The  Sceptic  13 

in  rooms  that  had  no  approach  to  the  external 
air.  Why,  if  you  were  not  restless  enough  to 
change  your  place,  your  mind  would  fall  sick 
and  feeble,  as  a  body  gets  bed-sores  lying 
supine  wherever  it  may  be  placed !  Salvation 
of  society  lies  in  the  struggle  of  society  for 
the  social  betterment. 

I  will  not  touch  the  question  of  destiny  now. 
That  belongs  in  the  discussion  of  the  next 
chapter,  which  deals  with  the  agnostic.  He 
knows  all  about  it — or  does  not  know  all  about 
it.  I  am  going  to  deal  with  him  as  Izaak 
Walton  says  about  the  minnow,  "  Put  him 
upon  the  hook  as  though  you  loved  him."  I 
think  I  can  show  that  he  has,  as  the  sceptic 
has,  his  place  in  the  sum  of  things,  and  has 
done  vastly  better  than  he  is  commonly  cred- 
ited with  doing. 

Now,  what  are  the  conditions  under  which 
scepticism  appears  ? 

All  progress  in  science  is  made  by  discrim- 
ination. What  would  be  the  use  of  the  science 
of  microscopy  unless  you  could  distinguish 
between  the  white  and  red  corpuscles  of  the 
blood  ;  between  those  things  that  in  a  general 
way  we  sum  up  as  microbes,  which  we  fear 
and  call  by  bad  names  ?  Scientific  advance  is 
made,   as  John  Fiske   says,  when    men   come 


14  One  World  at  a  Time 

to  see  dissimilarity  against  a  background  of 
uniformity.  We  know  the  stars  in  the  sky 
because  they  hang  out  dissimilar  against  a 
background  of  black  in  the  night.  The  uni- 
form background  throws  their  brilliancy  for- 
ward in  differing  radiance  to  the  eye  of  the 
observer.  All  progress  is  made  by  discrimina- 
tion ;  and  discrimination  is  the  business  of  the 
sceptic.  For  instance,  the  sceptic  is  usually 
the  man  who,  in  advance  of  his  time,  if  he  be 
serious,  finds  himself  holding  a  losing  cause. 
Socrates  was  the  most  believing  man  in  the 
Greek  lands,  and  they  called  him  an  atheist. 
That  is,  he  was  so  much  an  inquirer  that  he 
was  discontent  with  little  gods,  and  wanted  a 
god  great  enough  for  the  soul  that  entertained 
him.  And  if  you  will  read  the  Dialogues  of 
Plato  where  Socrates  Is  represented  as  speak- 
ing, you  will  be  struck  with  the  fact  that  the 
questioner  is  really  the  man  of  faith.  It  is 
the  friends  who  are  about  him  who  are  nerv- 
ous about  his  condition.  Take  that  splendid 
passage  In  the  Dialogue  where  Socrates  dis- 
courses upon  his  death.  He  Is  about  to  drink 
the  hemlock.  He  who  believed  In  God  ;  has 
been  condemned  to  death  as  an  atheist,  as 
a  corrupter  of  youth,  who  simply  taught  them 
to  know  themselves  at  their  best.     We  see 


The  Sceptic  15 

him  sitting  there — a  quaint,  squat  figure,  with 
curious  physiognomy,  the  very  face  seeming 
to  be  one  great  interrogation — and  someone 
says  to  him  during  a  pause  in  the  conversa- 
tion, "Socrates,  where  shall  we  bury  thee?" 
He  looks  about  upon  them,  and  finding  the 
questioner,  Crito,  says  :  "  Crito,  have  I  been 
so  long  with  you,  yet  do  you  speak  of  burying 
Socrates  ?  You  shall  bury  me  if  you  can 
catch  me.  But  when  you  have  buried  my 
body,  do  not  say  that  you  have  buried  Soc- 
rates." This  is  the  man  who  was  condemned 
to  death  because  he  did  not  believe ;  yet  that 
inquiring  spirit  was  really  the  only  profound 
believer  in  the  group.  For  inquiry  is  essential 
to  real  faith.  Luther  was  inquiring,  labouring 
up  the  great  stair  at  Rome  upon  his  knees, 
when  there  sounded  a  voice  to  him  saying, 
"  The  just  shall  live  by  faith."  Read  your 
New  Testament,  and  see  if  in  all  the  pages  of 
history  there  be  so  radical  an  inquirer  as  Jesus 
of  Nazareth.  We  speak  of  him  in  the  terms 
the  theologians  teach  us.  We  speak  of  him 
in  terms  the  doctrinal  teachings  have  inspired. 
But  when  we  begin  to  read  the  book  for  our- 
selves, what  do  we  find  ?  We  find  exactly  the 
same  spirit  that  was  common  in  the  prophets 
of  his  own  race, — Amos,  Nahum,  Hosea,  and 


1 6  One  World  at  a  Time 

Joel.  We  call  them  the  minor  prophets  ;  they 
were  really  the  great  statesmen  of  Israel.  We 
find  in  Jesus  the  same  spirit.  He  confronts 
those  about  him  with  such  a  statement  as  this  : 
"  Ye  have  heard  it  said,  *  An  eye  for  an  eye,  a 
tooth  for  a  tooth.'  I  say  unto  you.  Resist  not 
evil."  That  was  his  practical  challenge  to  the 
ancient  past.  Mark  those  two  sceptics  as  they 
face  each  other, —  Pilate,  the  bullet-headed 
Roman,  heavy  in  the  jowl  and  thick  in  the 
neck,  set  upon  the  precarious  throne  in  Jerusa- 
lem, and  standing  before  him  this  simple 
working-man,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  charged  with 
sedition.  Pilate  asks,  "  Art  thou  a  king  ?  " 
They  had  been  saying,  "  We  have  brought  to 
you  a  king  ;  so  he  calls  himself."  I  can  see  in 
my  mind  that  figure  hardened  by  work,  a 
young  man,  a  little  over  thirty  years  of  age, 
a  Galilean  carpenter,  straightening  himself  be- 
fore the  throne  that  represented  the  power  of 
the  Roman  world,  his  hands  bound  together 
and  the  rude  sceptre  between  them  in  mock 
sovereignty,  and  upon  his  shoulders  the  cloak 
of  some  Roman  soldier,  cast  there  in  derision, 
— I  can  see  him  straighten  himself  before  the 
Roman  procurator  and  say,  when  asked,  "  Art 
thou  a  king  ?  "  "  For  this  end  was  I  born,  for 
this  cause  came  I  into  the  world,  that  I  should 


The  Sceptic  17 

bear  witness  to  the  truth.  Thou  sayest  it.  I 
am  a  king."  Pilate,  the  sceptic  of  the  other 
type,  says,  "What  is  truth  ?"  He  turns  away 
without  an  answer,  expecting  none,  and  goes 
to  give  judgment  against  his  prisoner.  That 
is  the  sceptic  for  whom  the  world  has  no  use, 
and  who  is  only  remembered,  or  largely  re- 
membered, by  virtue  of  the  man  whom  he 
condemned.  The  real  inquirer  into  the  truth 
of  things  and  the  secret  of  Being  is  a  sceptic 
of  quite  another  kind. 

Let  me  name  two  or  three  conditions  which 
the  sceptic  who  is  the  true  inquirer — the  man 
who  asks  questions  and  wants  them  answered 
— is  to  observe,  if  his  scepticism  would  lead  to 
life. 

The  first  is,  that  he  shall  never  shirk  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  answer.  Now,  a  man  who  is 
simply  flipping  questions  as  to  his  being,  his 
environment,  and  his  destiny,  without  expect- 
ing any  answer,  who  likes  the  mental  agitation, 
does  not  care  for  the  responsibility  that  his 
question  raises.  The  true  Inquirer  never  asks 
a  question  the  answer  to  which  he  Is  not  will- 
ing to  hear.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  his 
courage.  I  remember  a  splendid  man,  self- 
educated,  who  came  to  be  the  President  of  the 
Board  of  Trustees  of  a  great  university,  a  man 


i8  One  World  at  a  Time 

of  business  and  great  affairs,  who  said  to  me, 
"  I  was  tauorht  that  God  was  a  God  of  wrath. 
1  was  taught  that  there  was  such  a  place  as  a 
cureless  hell.  I  was  taught  this  and  this  and 
this,"  reciting  the  horrible  details  of  instruc- 
tion in  his  youth,  "  and  I  worried  myself  with 
inquiries  as  to  how  this  could  be ;  how  I  could 
love  a  God  who  was  not  lovable  ;  how  I 
could  care  for  a  God  who  could  consign  those 
I  loved  to  endless  ruin.  And  one  night,  tort- 
ured until  early  morning  by  these  inquiries  of 
my  doubting  spirit,  I  made  up  my  mind  that  if 
God  was  a  Being  of  that  sort.  He  might  do 
just  what  He  pleased  with  me,  but  I  would 
never  love  Him;  and  I  turned  over  and  went 
to  sleep."  He  took  the  responsibility  of  his 
inquiry,  and  satisfied  himself,  not  with  the  an- 
swer, but  that  the  answer  could  not  be  incon- 
sistent with  the  sanity  and  sanctity  of  human 
nature.  So  the  responsibility  that  comes  with 
the  inquiry  must  never  be  shirked.  Other- 
wise you  had  much  better  not  ask  the  ques- 
tion. You  had  much  better  be  satisfied  where 
you  are.  Inquiring  what  you  are,  be  satis- 
fied just  to  know  you  are  alive  and  no  more. 
Inquiring  where  you  belong,  that  you  are  just 
where  you  are  put,  and  no  other  where.  In- 
quiring what  is  to  become  of  you,   put  your 


The  Sceptic  19 

hand  in  somebody's  hand,  and  ask  him  to  look 
out  for  you  as  you  go  through  the  deep  waters. 
There  is  no  other  way  unless  you  are  will- 
ing to  take  the  responsibility  of  the  inquiry. 
It  is  a  serious  matter  to  raise  a  doubt  in  your 
own  mind,  unless  you  are  going  to  follow 
it  to  the  end.  The  other  sort  of  man  is 
what  we  mean  by  the  "  doctrinaire."  He  ap- 
pears in  all  fields  of  inquiry  in  the  scientific 
and  the  practical  world  as  the  theorist.  I  was 
once  with  a  number  of  people  who  were  all 
going  down  to  the  shore  together,  and  some- 
body remembered  that  one  of  the  young  men 
in  the  party  probably  was  not  safe  in  the 
water.  He  said  to  him,  "  Can  you  swim  ? " 
The  young  man  answered  with  perfect  calm- 
ness, "  I  understand  the  theory  of  swimming." 
We  did  not  let  him  take  to  the  water.  We 
kept  him  on  shore,  because  the  man  who 
"  knows  the  theory  of  swimming  "  belongs  on 
land.  It  is  the  condition  of  inquiry  that  you 
shall  follow  it  clear  through,  not  in  the  doc- 
trinaire spirit,  the  spirit  of  the  theorist,  but  in 
the  spirit  of  the  practical,  hard-headed  inquirer, 
dealing  with  life  as  the  most  serious  thing  we 
have  to  deal  with.  Why,  what  is  your  busi- 
ness compared  with  your  being  ?  What  is 
your    daily    occupation    compared    with    the 


20  One  World  at  a  Time 

betterment  of  your  environment  ?  Is  there  any 
question  so  serious  as  the  question  of  the  de- 
stiny that  awaits  you  ?  What  are  you  fit  for  ? 
I  say  to  you  in  absolute  confidence,  The  thing 
you  are  fit  for,  you  will  get.  You  do  not 
believe  that  you  will  get  it  here  ?  No,  not  al- 
ways. Daily  destiny  does  not  apparently  take 
the  lines  of  fitness.  But  I  have  known  thou- 
sands of  people,  and  most  of  those  that  did  not 
get  placed  in  life  had  not  prepared  themselves 
for  any  place.  I  admit  the  artificiality  of 
society.  I  admit  the  unnaturalness  of  some  of 
the  conditions.  I  admit  the  fact  that  some- 
times men  have  not  the  opportunity  that  other 
men  have,  and  men  are  not  equal  in  oppor- 
tunity or  power.  But,  I  believe,  given  a  good 
body  and  a  good  brain,  the  whole  business  of 
life  is  making  one's  self  fit.  Destiny  takes 
care  of  itself. 

The  second  condition  is,  not  only  that  he 
shall  not  avoid  the  responsibility  of  the  an- 
swer, but  that  he  shall  not  shun  the  struggle 
of  soul.  If  the  sceptic  is  a  serious  inquirer, 
if  he  is  an  inquirer  intent  upon  the  answer,  not 
afraid  what  the  answer  shall  be,  prepared  to 
take  his  share  of  the  risk  of  having  raised  the 
question,  then  he  must  not  shun  the  struggle 
of  souk     It   is  struggle  of  body  that  brings 


The  Sceptic  21 

health.  It  is  struggle  of  mind  that  brings 
intelligence.  It  is  the  faculty  of  thought  ex- 
ercised that  makes  it  easy  to  think  and  a  de- 
light to  think.  //  is  struggle  of  sottl  that 
saves.  "  We  must  so  trust  the  order  of  Nature 
as  to  believe  that  whatever  questions  the 
universe  inspires  us  to  ask,  the  universe  can 
answer."  So  said  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 
Someone  said  to  Father  Taylor,  the  Methodist 
chaplain  of  seamen  in  Boston,  when  Emerson 
had  uttered  such  a  sentiment,  "  He  is  a 
wonderful  man,  but  he  will  surely  go  to  hell." 
Father  Taylor  had  a  kind  of  mild  belief  in 
the  pit,  I  suppose,  but  he  turned  to  the  man 
who  said  Emerson  would  go  to  that  place 
and  answered,  "If  Emerson  should  go  to 
hell,  he  would  make  a  change  in  the  climate, 
and  migration  would  set  that  way."  As  to  this 
view  of  destiny  what  has  happened  ?  The 
people  who  have  been  consigned  to  cureless 
ruin  have  somehow  banked  the  fires  and 
slowed  down  the  motion  of  the  world's  hate. 

If  the  sceptic  be  serious,  not  a  mere 
trifler,  the  final  condition  he  must  fulfil  is 
that  he  shall  not  shirk  the  discipline  of  life. 
It  is  of  no  use  for  you  to  go  out  with  a  ques- 
tion on  your  lips  unless  you  will  take  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  answer  and  be  prepared  for 


22  One  World  at  a  Time 

struggle  of  soul — unless,  above  all  things  else, 
you  are  willing  to  stand  up  to  the  discipline  of 
life.  Suppose  a  conviction  seizes  upon  a  man's 
mind  that  a  certain  course  of  life  is  the  only 
one  for  him  to  follow  ;  he  may  be  a  doubter  as 
to  the  social  standard  ;  perhaps  all  society  is 
running  the  other  way  ;  perhaps  the  whole 
trend  of  mind  about  him  is  taking  another 
course.  He  may  be  utterly  wrong,  mistaken, 
but  his  mind  is  dealing  with  things  at  first 
hand.  To  him  that  course  seems  to  be  the 
only  course  to  take.  Let  him  hold  that  course 
to  the  end.  It  may  be  that  he  shall  find,  as 
we  do  in  the  Adirondack  and  Maine  waters, 
that  he  has  only  taken  a  short  cut  across  the 
bend,  and  comes  out  with  his  companions 
who  have  gone  a  more  circuitous  way  around. 
He  has  found  the  short  cut  to  the  end  ;  and 
conviction,  and  resolution,  and  struggle  of  soul, 
and  sense  of  responsibility,  and  verve  and 
power  and  energy  of  the  individual  mind  have 
driven  him  through  obstacles  that  would  have 
impeded  men  of  more  timid  soul. 

We  must  take  the  discipline  of  life.  It  is  a 
splendid  thing  to  stand  up  and  take  your  pun- 
ishment if  you  have  invited  it.  I  know  a  man 
whom  I  greatly  revere,  who  is  distinguished  in 
his  profession,  a  man  of  great  capability  in  the 


The  Sceptic  23 

work  in  which  he  is  engaged,  who  in  his  early 
Hfe,  from  this  very  curiosity  and  inquiry,  made 
a  radical  mistake,  which  he  never  could  cor- 
rect. He  has  gained  all  that  he  has  gained  of 
power  and  purpose  by  taking  his  punishment 
without  whining.  There  is  no  place  in  the 
world  for  a  whimpering  man.  We  were  set 
squarely  on  our  feet.  We  were  given  power 
and  force,  clearness  of  thought,  right  feeling, 
and  we  were  given  these  things  that  we  as 
part  of  its  creative  power  might  mould  the 
world  or  fashion  it  according  to  the  fashion 
that  in  our  moments  of  inquiry  we  have  seen, 
fashioning  ourselves  together  with  it  by  force 
of  our  splendid  inquiry  and  conviction. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  AGNOSTIC 

THE  term  "  agnostic  "  has  a  singular  fascina- 
tion for  many  minds.  It  would  seem  that 
a  term  which  means  "  not  knowing  "  would 
hardly  have  fascination  for  a  mind  the  busi- 
ness of  which  is  to  know.  I  suppose  that 
fascination  which  is  exerted  by  the  term  arises 
in  part  from  the  association  with  the  distin- 
guished name  of  Professor  Huxley,  for  it  was 
Professor  Huxley  who  made  agnosticism  popu- 
lar and  respectable.  In  the  last  night  of  1856, 
Professor  Huxley,  at  the  very  beginning  of  his 
fame,  sat  alone  in  his  study  waiting  for  the 
birth  of  his  first  child.  The  tension  of  his 
mind  was  stretched  over  the  pains  of  advent 
into  this  life,  and  he  set  himself  to  say  to 
his  journal  what  his  ambitions  in  life  should 
be  for  the  three  or  four  years  stretching  ahead 
of  that  hour.  All  that  was  best  in  him  was 
involved  in  the  holy  sacrament  of  his  child's 
birth,  and  he  wrote  in  his  journal : 

24 


The  Agnostic  25 

"  I  am  resolved  to  smite  all  humbugs,  however  big, 
to  give  a  nobler  tone  to  science,  to  set  an  example  of 
abstinence  from  petty  personal  controversies,  and  of 
toleration  for  everything  but  lying  ;  to  be  indifferent 
as  to  whether  the  work  is  recognised  as  mine  or  not,  so 
long  as  it  is  done." 

He  had  started  upon  his  course,  which  he  went 
on  in  the  pages  of  his  journal  to  describe  in  a 
German  verse  of  which  the  translation  is  in 
part  this  : 

"  Wilt  shape  a  noble  life  ?     Then  cast 
No  backward  glances  to  the  past. 
And  what  if  something  shall  be  lost. 
Act  as  new-born  in  all  thou  dost." 

And  so  on  through  a  verse  of  noble  purpose. 
Just  below  this  he  writes  :  "  Half-past  ten  at 
night.  I  am  waiting  for  the  birth  of  my  child. 
I  seem  to  fancy  that  it  shall  be  the  pledge  that 
all  these  things  shall  be."  A  little  farther 
down  he  writes  :  "  Born  five  minutes  before 
twelve.  Thank  God  !  New  Year's  Day,  1857." 
That  is  a  painful  page,  as  we  continue  our 
reading,  where,  just  below,  he  records  in  Sep- 
tember, i860,  that  this  same  child,  "Our 
Noel  "  (he  was  born  so  near  Christmas  they 
gave  him  the  name), 

"  Our  first-born,  after  being  for  four  years  our  delight 
and  joy,  was  carried  off  with  scarlet  fever.     This  day 


26  One  World  at  a  Time 

week  he  and  I  had  a  great  romp  together.  On  Friday 
his  restless  head  with  its  bright  blue  eyes  and  tangle  of 
golden  hair,  tossed  all  day  upon  his  pillow.  On  Satur- 
day night  I  carried  him  here  into  my  study  and  laid  his 
cold,  still  body  here  where  I  write.  Here,  too,  on  Sunday 
night  came  his  mother  and  I  to  have  the  holy  leave-taking. 
My  boy  is  gone  ;  but  in  a  higher  and  a  better  sense  than 
was  in  my  mind  when  I  wrote  four  years  ago  what  stands 
above,  I  feel  that  my  fancy  has  been  fulfilled.  I  say 
heartily  and  without  bitterness, '  Amen  ;  so  let  it  be.'  " 

I  have  quoted  these  extracts  from  the  journal 
of  a  great  scientific  man,  that  you  may  know- 
two  or  three  thino-s  about  the  man  with  whose 
history  the  term  "  agnostic  "  is  most  associated 
in  the  popular  mind,  and  those  two  or  three 
things  are  :  First,  that  the  cause  which  led  him 
first  to  declare  his  agnosticism  concerning  im- 
mortality was  a  letter  of  Charles  Kingsley, 
perhaps  the  noblest  man  in  the  English  pulpit 
of  that  day,  who  wrote  to  Huxley  trying  to 
comfort  him  and  give  him  grounds  of  belief  in 
immortality.  Huxley,  in  the  tenderest  and 
kindest  way,  challenges  Charles  Kingsley  for 
his  proofs,  and  declares  that  until  some  fact 
like  the  facts  of  Nature  is  presented  to  him,  he 
must  simply  say  he  does  not  know.  The  let- 
ter is  a  model  at  once  of  manly  courage  and 
paternal  tenderness,  and  I  could  almost  wish 
that  the  people  who  claim  they  know  so  much 


The  Ao'nostic  27 


■■t) 


would  know  as  little  as  Huxley  did  in  that 
hour  of  what  nobody  can  know.  In  saying 
this,  however,  I  must  call  your  attention  to 
certain  limitations  upon  his  statement  that  ap- 
pear also  in  this  journal  and  in  the  letters. 
Huxley  was  not  an  atheist.  He  was  so  much 
of  a  scientist  that  he  knew  perfectly  well  that 
philosophic  atheism  is  impossible.  Practical 
atheism  is  possible.  That  is,  a  man  can  live 
as  though  there  were  no  God,  but  he  cannot 
give  a  reason  for  it  based  on  the  fact  that  there 
is  no  God.  In  other  words,  philosophic  athe- 
ism has  gone  out  of  fashion  with  the  common 
mind,  because  the  scientific  mind,  led  by  men 
like  Huxley,  and  Spencer,  and  Darwin,  and 
Wallace,  and  their  co-workers,  has  given  it 
such  proofs  of  the  ordered  world  as  to  leave 
the  being  of  God  the  most  rational  solution  of 
that  order.  So  that  when  Mr.  Huxley  says 
of  the  birth  of  his  child,  "  Thank  God  ! "  he  is 
not  in  the  attitude  of  the  French  atheist  who 
said,  "  I  thank  God  that  I  am  an  atheist !  " 
Mr.  Huxley  says  in  another  place  :  "  Our  true 
attitude  is  to  sit  down  like  a  little  child  before 
the  facts  of  Nature  and  apprehend  them  on 
their  own  ground."  And  that  is  the  teachable 
attitude. 

I  will  not  trouble  you  with  further  extracts 


28  One  World  at  a  Time 

from  that  wonderful  life  now  just  published, 
but  will  proceed  at  once  to  the  discussion  of 
what  agnosticism  really  means,  and  to  the 
discussion  of  whether  it  is  a  rational  state  of 
mind. 

I  hold,  as  I  said  of  the  sceptic,  a  brief  for 
the  agnostic  on  certain  lines,  because  the  busi- 
ness of  every  man  who  professes  to  be  a 
teacher  of  the  religious  life,  or  a  teacher  of 
ethics,  or  an  intelligent  man  busy  with  his 
kind  is  to  try  to  get  the  other  man's  point  of 
view.  It  is  a  narrow  ledo-e  that  has  not  room 
for  two  people  to  stand  on  it  and  see  the  view 
together ;  it  must  be  hard  climbing  and  a 
perilous  poise  if  there  is  only  room  for  one. 
So  that  the  business  of  life  is  really  to  try  to 
get  the  other  man's  point  of  view,  to  see  what 
he  sees.  He  may  see  the  rush  of  the  stream 
and  say  it  is  a  first-class  place  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  mill.  I  may  see  it  and  think 
that  with  its  rushing  stream  it  is  the  most 
beautiful  landscape  I  have  ever  seen.  An- 
other man  may  see  it  and  say  that  the  water- 
course argues  rich  pasture  land  in  the  meadows 
through  which  it  flows.  Each  will  see  it  from 
the  standpoint  of  his  attitude ;  but  I  am 
bound  to  try  to  understand  why  one  man 
wants  to  build  a  mill,  and  why  the  other  man 


The  Agnostic  29 

wants  to  cultivate  a  farm,  when  I  only  want  a 
picture  ;  the  difference  is  between  the  practical 
man  of  affairs  and  the  more  practical  man,  the 
poet,  as  I  hold.  I  hope  to  prove  to  you  that 
the  man  who  simply  insists  upon  the  things 
that  he  knows,  and  declares  that  he  knows  he 
cannot  know  any  more,  is  not  the  most  prac- 
tical of  men. 

The  term  "  asfnostic  "  did  not  oriofinate  with 
Mr.  Huxley.  He  adopted  it,  not  knowing, 
I  think,  that  he  adopted  it  from  the  early 
Christian  Church.  Mr.  Huxley  was  not  a  great 
theologian.  He  was  not  a  great  student  of 
the  early  church.  If  he  had  been,  he  would 
not  have  given  so  much  attention  to  the  story 
in  the  New  Testament  of  the  devils  which  went 
out  of  the  man  and  entered  into  the  pigs. 
The  real  difficulty  in  that  story  is,  Who  paid 
for  the  hogs  ?  I  never  could  believe  in  the 
morality  of  that  story  because  the  swine  were 
a  dead  loss  to  the  owner ;  and  if  there  are 
any  devils  they  probably  were  not  drowned ; 
so  the  whole  thing  was  a  loss  on  all  sides. 
Mr.  Huxley  was  continually  quoting  this  in 
his  Essays,  as  though  it  were  a  sample  mira- 
cle. I  refer  to  this  to  show  that  he  was  not 
a  great  theologian  nor  a  great  biblical  critic. 
But  the  fact  is,  in  the  early  church,  the  term 


30  One  World  at  a  Time 

"  agnostic "  was  assumed  by  a  sect  in  op- 
position to  the  "  Gnostics,"  a  group  of  people 
who  appeared  in  the  Eastern  Church  here 
and  there,  of  whom  not  so  much  is  known 
as  one  could  wish,  but  who  were  the  "know- 
ing" people,  the  mystics  of  their  day.  The 
"  Agnostics  "  were  the  men  who  claimed  that 
God  did  not  know  everything,  that  He  was  not 
omnipresent.  So,  gradually,  the  term  came 
to  be  applied  to  men  as  not  knowing.  Grad- 
ually Herbert  Spencer  took  it  up  and  devised 
out  of  it  the  term,  "  Unknowable,"  as  applied 
to  God.  So  we  get  it  in  all  variations.  It  is 
a  kaleidoscopic  term,  and  yet  most  men  who 
use  it  and  say,  "  I  am  an  agnostic,"  simply 
mean,  "There  are  some  things  I  do  not  know, 
and  therefore  I  will  not  debate  about  them." 
Too  often  they  mean,  "  There  are  some 
things  I  do  not  know  because  they  cannot  be 
known."  And  it  behooves  them  to  inquire 
whether  that  definition  is  correct  or  not ;  and 
that  is  the  purpose  of  this  chapter. 

Now  the  position  of  the  scientific  mind  on 
the  subject  is  this  :  nothing  can  be  known  ex- 
cept from  experience.  The  idealist  and  the 
experientialist,  to  use  the  philosophic  terms, 
are  opposed  the  one  to  the  other.  The  ideal- 
ist lives  in  a  world  of  visions.     The  experien- 


The  Agnostic  31 

tialist  lives  in  a  world  of  experiment.  And 
yet,  when  you  come  to  analyse  the  term  "  ex- 
perience," it  marries  itself  to  a  very  beautiful 
poetic  idealism.  Let  me  tell  you  how  the 
term  was  first  used  in  a  way  that  included  both 
meanings.  In  the  French  guilds  of  artisans, 
the  skilled  silver  workers  and  gold  workers  of 
the  Middle  Age,  the  apprentice  worked  seven 
years  upon  his  tasks.  When  he  had  wrought 
out  some  beautiful  thing,  perhaps  in  beaten 
silver,  he  brought  it  to  the  master  of  the 
guild  and  said,  "  Behold  my  experience  !  "  We 
take  over  into  our  Eno-Hsh  tong-ue  that  word 
"experience."  He  meant  by  it  the  sum  of  all 
his  experiments.  He  had  been  an  apprentice 
these  seven  years.  He  had  spoiled  many  a 
good  bit  of  metal.  He  had  dulled  the  edge 
of  many  a  good  tool.  He  had  spent  painful 
days  and  nights  of  labour.  He  had  given  him- 
self to  the  work  with  enthusiasm,  but  the  whole 
of  it  was  in  this  little  bit  of  work  here — his 
experience,  the  sum  of  his  experiments,  was 
there,  and  upon  the  acceptance  of  it  by  the 
Master  of  his  Guild,  he  might  take  his  kit  of 
tools  and  go  out  as  a  journey  workman,  mas- 
ter of  his  craft.  In  other  words,  the  practical 
workman  was  proved  by  the  beautiful  thing  he 
had  done,  and  the  ideal  there  embodied  was 


32  One  World  at  a  Time 

the  ideal  of  his  experience  there  wrought  out. 
The  scientific  man  says,  "  I  can  only  know  by 
experience."  Now  I  would  say,  in  general 
terms,  that  that  is  true.  I  have  no  quarrel 
with  that  proposition.  I  am  an  idealist  and  I 
am  an  experientialist  in  the  same  sense  in 
which  I  am  an  individualist  and  a  socialist  to- 
gether. Let  me  say  to  my  socialistic  friends 
that  the  solution  of  their  difficulties  lies  along 
the  line  of  individualism,  as  the  difficulties  of 
the  experientialist  may  be  solved  along  the 
line  of  intelligent  idealism.  The  socialist, 
when  he  comes  to  understand,  as  I  think  more 
and  more  he  is  coming  to  understand,  that 
"  society  is  an  organism  in  which  every  cell  has 
consciousness,"  will  discover  that  the  health  of 
the  tissue  depends  on  the  health  of  the  indi- 
vidual cell ;  so  that  if  he  is  to  have  an  organic 
whole  that  is  absolutely  in  health,  he  must 
start  with  the  health  of  the  cell  and  see  to  it 
that  no  part  aches  through  disease  or  is  lost  by 
dismemberment.  So  in  the  other  field,  the 
field  of  experience,  the  result  depends  not  sim- 
ply upon  the  sum  of  experiences,  but  on  the 
elements  that  go  to  make  it  up.  Have  I  no 
experiences  but  such  as  come  through  the 
senses,  or  does  the  union  of  them  in  contact 
with  their  environment  constitute  another  ex- 


The  Agnostic  33 

perience  ?  I  incline  to  feel  that  the  touch, 
smell,  taste,  sight,  and  hearing  senses  do  not 
sum  up  the  whole  experience  of  life.  I  know 
that  there  is  a  narrow  school  of  experience  to 
which  the  most  radical  agnosticism  turns,  that 
says,  "  You  cannot  know  anything  except  what 
you  can  see,  hear,  feel,  taste,  or  smell."  Well, 
then,  you  do  not  know  more  than  a  dog,  be- 
cause he  has  all  those  senses.  His  scent  is 
keener  than  yours ;  his  hearing  is  keener  than 
yours  ;  his  sight  is  as  good  as  yours  ;  he  is  so 
swift  of  foot  that  he  can  tell  the  contact  of  his 
touch  sense  with  the  ground  quickly  enough  to 
lift  his  foot  and  go  on,  while  you  have  to  pain- 
fully learn  to  walk  after  months  of  trying.  All 
his  senses  are  more  alert  than  yours.  But  this 
man,  who  claims  to  belong  to  the  most  radical 
school  of  agnosticism,  and  says  that  he  knows 
nothing  that  he  cannot  see,  hear,  feel,  smell,  or 
taste,  I  think  would  hardly  agree  that  the  sum 
of  life  is  in  the  sensations  of  life ;  for  the  rea- 
son that,  if  that  were  so,  one  artist  would  be 
as  good  as  another.  They  use  the  same  col- 
ours, they  handle  the  same  pigments  and  the 
same  utensils  of  their  art,  the  same  tools  of 
their  craft.  They  see  the  same  view,  and  they 
have  an  equal  desire  to  sell  their  pictures. 
Still,  it  is  not  true  that  artists  are  all  alike. 


34  One  World  at  a  Time 

Some  artists  see  Apocalyptic  visions  such  as 
visited  John  on  Patmos,  and  others  will  paint 
you  a  portrait  of  an  onion,  and  think  that  is  a 
picture.  Artists  are  not  alike.  Pictures  are 
not  alike.  I  heard  of  a  man  the  other  day  who 
made  up  his  mind  that  the  reason  he  could  not 
write  good  poetry  was  that  he  did  not  drink. 
He  said,  in  general  terms,  "  Now  I  am  a  moral 
man  and  an  abstainer ;  but,  as  I  read,  the 
great  poets — most  of  them — indulged  in  liquor, 
and  their  best  poems  were  written  under  the 
influence  of  drink."  I  suppose  he  had  heard 
about  Poe  and  a  few  more  who  were  weak  in 
this  direction.  He  told  a  friend  of  mine  that 
he  determined  to  write  a  great  poem,  so  he 
bought  half  a  pint  of  whiskey  and  drank  it  all. 
What  happened?  He  went  to  sleep  and  did 
not  have  a  single  idea.  Poets  are  not  all  alike, 
but  they  all  have  the  same  senses,  if  not  all 
the  same  sense.  I  think  we  shall  have  to  en- 
large the  boundaries  of  what  constitutes  ex- 
perience of  life,  and  say  that  it  is  not  summed 
up  in  the  five  senses.  The  soul  sits  central, 
and  caravans  come  in  through  the  senses,  bring- 
ing traffic  from  the  outside  world.  The  touch 
sense  drags  its  caravans  forward,  the  eye  sense 
beckons  them  near,  the  ear  sense  hears  their 
footfall  from  afar.    So  through  these  gateways 


The  Agnostic  35 

the  central  soul  receives  the  tribute  of  the 
world.  What  does  the  soul  do  with  it?  That 
is  the  problem.  This  is  exactly  what  Brown- 
ing means  when  he  says  that  when  you  strike 
a  chord  upon  an  instrument  you  do  not  get  an- 
other note;  you  get  "a  star" — you  get  some- 
thing that  all  the  notes  have  contributed,  which 
the  aesthetic  sense  in  the  musician  recognises 
as  a  new  thing,  and  calls  it  a  chord.  That  is 
what  Emerson  meant  when  he  said,  "  If  two 
and  two  did  not  sometimes  make  five,  we 
never  would  get  on."  That  is  perfectly  true. 
It  is  the  "  unearned  increment  "  of  the  two  and 
two  that  makes  the  additional  one  that  makes 
five.  Two  and  two  have  gone  out  at  interest 
and  have  received  their  interest  in  a  new  convic- 
tion, in  a  new  emotion,  in  a  new  ideal,  in  a  new 
sensation,  which  is  a  new  experience  in  the 
mind.  This  narrowing  of  experience  by  the 
agnostic  to  the  senses,  who  says  that  he  does  not 
know  anything  that  they  do  not  register,  has  its 
parallel  in  the  working-man  who  comes  to  you 
and  says  with  perfect  candour  and  frankness 
that  there  is  "  nothing  that  makes  wealth 
but  labour."  He  means  that ;  and  by  labour  he 
means  that  which  takes  the  strength,  that  ex- 
hausts muscular  effort,  that  wears  upon  the 
nerve,   that  breaks  down  tissue.     He   means 


36  One  World  at  a  Time 

work,  labour, — "  nothing  makes  wealth  but 
labour."  Now,  he  really  believes  that.  So  I 
turn  to  him  and  I  say  to  him,  "  My  dear  friend, 
1  sympathise  with  your  wish  to  exalt  labour, 
but  I  will  take  you  down  here  to  the  East 
River  and  show  you,  what  has  ceased  to  be  a 
wonder,  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  The  Brooklyn 
Bridge  was  a  mathematical  problem  before  it 
ever  was  a  bridge.  Every  worker  in  metals 
knows  that  a  given  grade  of  steel  can  be  estim- 
ated to  the  fraction — the  smallest  fraction— 
of  weight  as  to  the  strain  that  it  will  bear  for 
every  cubic  inch  of  its  length.  Every  yacht 
— even  the  keenest  racing-machine — is  not  on 
paper  first  as  a  diagram  and  model ;  it  is  on 
paper  as  a  mathematical  problem  calculated 
in  terms  of  figures,  signs,  and  mathematical 
nomenclature ;  it  is  a  study  in  mathematics, 
not  a  study  in  labour,  before  ever  a  keel  is  laid, 
before  ever  a  sheet  of  iron  or  steel  is  forged. 
The  whole  thing  has  sailed  the  seas  of  some- 
body's mind  before  it  sailed  the  Atlantic.  The 
Brooklyn  Bridge  hung  up  complete  in  the 
head  of  the  engineer  before  it  ever  spanned 
the  East  River."  You  are  compelled  to  enlarge 
your  meaning  of  labour,  just  as  the  agnostic  has 
to  enlarge  his  meaning  of  experience.  Now, 
if  by  experience  I  mean  a  larger  thing  than  the 


The  A8:nostic  37 


■■fc 


senses  can  reveal,  how  far  shall  I  carry  the 
meaninor  of  that  word  before  I  reach  the  limit  ? 

o 

Well,  I  am  going  to  carry  it  into  the  mind 
first.  I  insist  that  I  can  grasp  a  thought,  but 
not  with  my  hand.  I  insist  that  I  can  see  a 
proposition  that  is  not  discernible  to  the  eye. 
I  insist  that  I  can  hear  music  that  never  was 
on  sea  or  land,  and  that  haunts  the  chambers 
of  the  mind,  and  is  the  cause,  in  those  who  are 
competent,  of  the  great  oratorios  and  operas 
that  have  been  given  to  the  musical  world.  No 
eye  saw  them  ;  no  ear  heard  them  ;  no  hand 
touched  them.  They  were  regnant  in  the  soul 
of  the  composer.  A  competent  musician  will 
take  the  score,  the  orchestration  of  such  an 
opera,  and,  with  the  mere  score  in  his  hand, 
sit  and  hear  the  whole  orchestration  without 
an  instrument  being  present.  Is  that  an  ex- 
perience ?  I  hold  that  it  is ;  and  if  a  man 
comes  in  and  says,  "  There  is  no  music  except 
what  the  violins  make  with  the  accompany- 
ing instruments,"  I  turn  to  him  as  that  great 
musician  would,  and  say  to  him,  "  The  concert 
pitch  is  not  in  the  instrument,  it  is  in  the  mind  ; 
and  we  know  when  the  orchestration  is  in  per- 
fect accord  by  the  registry  of  the  consciousness 
in  terms  of  thought,  and  not  simply  in  terms 
of  the  auditory  nerve."     Take  the  eye  as  an  il- 


38  One  World  at  a  Time 

lustration.  I  want  to  get  my  agnostic  on  the 
plane  of  intellect,  and  away  from  the  plane  of 
the  senses.  Take  the  eye  as  an  instrument.  The 
eye  is  a  thing  to  see  through  ;  it  is  not  a  thing 
to  see  with.  It  is  a  telescope,  a  microscope,  if 
you  please.  The  eye's  spot  is  not  behind  my 
glasses,  but  from  within  the  brain  ;  and  a  blow 
on  the  back  of  the  head  will  produce  blindness 
quite  as  certainly  as  a  blow  in  the  face.  The 
instrument  can  be  disfigured,  and  yet  the  vis- 
ions it  has  seen  remain  !  Let  me  with  one 
single  example  show  you  what  I  mean.  There 
was  a  beautiful  story  told  of  Helen  Keller, 
and  I  sent  to  Helen  Keller  to  know  whether 
it  were  true.  You  know  that  Miss  Keller, 
who  is  now  a  student  in  Radcliffe  College, 
Harvard  University,  was,  at  the  beginning, 
blind  and  dumb  and  deaf,  absolutely.  The 
painful,  careful  training  by  Miss  Sullivan  and 
those  associated  with  her  has  made  that  young 
girl  capable  of  taking  her  Latin  and  Greek  ex- 
aminations for  entrance  into  Radcliffe  College, 
and  has  widened  her  information  beyond  that 
of  most  girls  of  her  age.  This  is  the  story  : 
They  were  very  careful  that  she  should  never 
have  any  religion  taught  her,  because  they 
wanted  to  see  whether  there  is  an  experience 
that  does  not  depend  upon  sight  or  hearing 


The  Agnostic  39 

or  speech,  the  ordinary  avenues  through  which 
rehgion  comes,  —  the  reading  of  religious 
books,  the  hearing  of  argument,  and  talking 
with  people  of  religious  tendencies.  That 
was  shut  away  from  her  by  intention.  It  is 
said  that  Phillips  Brooks  was  brought  finally 
to  visit  Helen  Keller  and  to  talk  with  her 
about  the  Fatherhood  of  God.  And  he  spoke 
of  God,  our  Father,  as  only  he  could  speak, 
in  terms  so  natural  that  God  was  broucrht 
near ;  in  terms  so  tender  that  she  was  not 
afraid  ;  in  terms  so  real  that  it  seemed  a  com- 
panionable thought ;  and  when  he  stopped, 
she  turned  her  sightless  eyes  to  him  and  said, 
in  the  language  she  had  learned  by  painful  ef- 
fort through  the  years,  "  Dr.  Brooks,  I  have 
always  known  Him,  but  I  did  not  know  His 
name."  Will  my  agnostic  friend  insist  that 
there  is  not  a  field  of  experience  that  is  within 
the  horizons  of  the  mind,  helped  only  a  little 
by  the  slightest  contact,  such  as  this  girl  had, 
with  the  external  world  ? 

One  other  suggestion.  I  insist  that  the  ag- 
nostic must  understand  one  thing  most  clearly, 
and  it  is  this  :  the  laws  of  the  mind  are  as 
much  laws  of  nature  as  the  laws  of  matter. 
Indeed,  I  would  be  willing  to  say  that  they 
are  more  the  laws  of  nature  than  the  laws  of 


40  One  World  at  a  Time 

matter.  There  is  not  a  man  so  scientific,  or 
so  wise  in  his  own  conceit,  that  he  would  be 
able  to  demonstrate  to  anyone  else  whether 
spirit  is  a  sublimation  of  matter,  or  matter  is  a 
precipitate  of  spirit.  You  do  not  know  ;  and 
you  do  not  know,  because  there  is  not  a  man 
in  the  world  who  knows.  Some  people  guess, 
but  this  is  not  a  subject  for  conundrums  ;  it  is 
a  field  for  earnest  questions.  The  conun- 
drum is  a  question  the  answer  to  which  you 
have  to  guess,  and  in  that  it  differs  from  the 
rational  question,  the  answer  to  which  some- 
body knows.  I  insist,  therefore,  that  the  laws 
of  mind,  the  terms  of  consciousness,  are  the 
real  terms,  in  which  the  world  is  known. 
Some  reader  of  these  pages  may  ask,  "  How 
do  you  know  that  there  is  another  life?"  I 
answer  you  now  that  I  do  not  know.  Then, 
he  will  probably  say,  "  And  are  you  a  Christ- 
ian minister  ? "  And  I  will  say,  "  I  am  a 
minister  of  a  Christian  Church,  and  I  hope  I 
am  a  Christian  minister,  but  I  would  rather 
the  congregation  would  testify  to  that."  The 
fact  is,  the  experientialist  is  right  in  that  re- 
gard. It  was  that  to  which  Huxley  addressed 
himself.  You  cannot  know  that  which  you 
have  not  experienced,  and  another  world,  an- 
other li'fe,  is  a  thing  that  you  cannot  experi- 


The  Agnostic  4^ 

ence  while  you  are  occupied  with  this  world 
and  this  life.  If  you  ask  me  if  I  can  make  an 
argument  for  immortality,  I  will  say  with  per- 
fect frankness,  "  Yes,  I  think  I  can  make  an 
argument,  the  probabilities  of  which  are  all  on 
the  side  of  remaining  for  ever  a  personality  in 
God's  world."  I  think  I  can  make  an  argu- 
ment for  that.  This  is  not  the  time  for  it. 
But  if  you  were  dying,  and  you  were  to  call 
me  to  your  bedside  and  ask  me  whether  I 
could  guarantee  you  by  proofs  known  to  me 
that  you  should  go  out  of  what  you  call  life 
into  life  for  ever, — in  spite  of  the  desire  in  my 
mind  to  help  you, — I  must  still  say,  I  do  not 
know.  On  that  subject  agnosticism  is  per- 
fectly justifiable,  because  it  is  outside  the 
plane  of  experience.  Now  I  believe  I  shall 
live  for  ever ;  and  I  can  argue  that  question 
down  to  the  ground.  You  ask  me  if  I  know  ; 
and  the  agnostic  attitude  is,  I  do  not  know, 
because  it  is  not  within  the  horizon  of  my  ex- 
perience. The  first  reason  for  this  is,  that 
testimony  is  not  evidence  in  this  sense  ;  and 
all  the  relicrious  books  of  the  world  mig-ht  be 
piled  one  upon  the  other  to  say  that  men 
believed  in  the  eternal  life,  in  "  the  other  life," 
as  they  are  in  the  habit  of  calling  it, — and 
yet,  when  you  are  through,  you  simply  have 


42  One  World  at  a  Time 

accumulated  testimony  of  extremely  good  peo- 
ple, who  thoroughly  believed,  and  lived  in  the 
terms  of  their  belief,  that  they  should  never 
pass  out  of  existence  ;  but  it  would  not  be 
evidence.  What  they  knoiu  is  the  life  that 
now  is  — -  they  have  the  power  to  live  in  such 
sublime  terms  as  to  feci  the  promise  of  "the 
life  to  come." 

The  second  reason  is  this  :  the  only  way 
to  find  out  about  dying  is  to  die,  and  nature 
seems  to  have  arranged  it  so  that  after  you 
have  done  that  you  cannot  tell  what  the 
experience  is.  There  may  be  among  my 
readers  people  who  believe  profoundly  in 
spirit  communication,  and  I  expect  to  hear 
from  them  on  this  subject,  I  want  to  say  to 
them  now,  that  I  do  not  deny  that  perfectly 
plausible  reports  may  have  come  to  perfectly 
credulous  people  from  "the  other  world,"  as 
they  call  it.  I  am  prepared  to  say  that  ;  but 
what  I  contend  is,  that  you  cannot  know  it 
as  coming  from  the  other  world.  Why  ? 
Because  you  can  only  know  it  in  terms  of 
your  own  consciousness,  and  the  moment 
you  know  it  in  terms  of  your  present  con- 
sciousness, you  have  to  take  the  "other- 
world  "  tag  off  and  put  this  world's  tag  on. 
That    is  the   difficulty.     The  moment  I  know 


The  Aonostic  43 


£) 


it,  I  know  it  in  terms  of  my  present  exper- 
ience, therefore  it  is  not  from  the  "  other 
world'"  to  me. 

The  further  reason  touches  the  people  that 
get  these  marvellous  communications — which 
I  do  not  deny  ;  I  am  agnostic  with  regard  to 
them  ;  I  do  not  know  them,  I  have  never 
had  them.  The  only  attempts  made  upon 
my  credulity  in  that  direction  were  so  ridicul- 
ous and  so  inconclusive  that  when  the  partici- 
pants in  the  Sceance  were  through  I  asked 
them  if  I  might  have  my  inning,  and  they 
said  I  might.  I  said  if  they  did  n't  mind,  I 
would  lead  them  in  prayer,  and  I  had  a  service 
of  religion  with  those  people.  It  seemed  to 
be  a  shock  to  them,  but  it  was  a  practical 
way.  I  thought  that  you  might  speak  to  the 
Cause  of  being  with  such  confidence  that  all 
other  questions  were  insignificant  in  compari- 
son. We  must  also  remember  the  human 
mind  is  much  less  explored  up  to  date  than 
the  continent  of  Africa.  That  is,  we  know 
more  about  the  continent  of  Africa  than 
about  the  human  mind.  When  you  get 
certain  psychic  results  that  are  reported  to 
you  as  having  come  from  some  "other  world" 
you  are  not  sure  when  you  have  heard  it  that 
it  is  not  a  report  from  some  interior  province 


44  One  World  at  a  Time 

of  the  human  mind,  from  which  some  wan- 
derer of  consciousness  has  come  in  to  report 
his  tribe  and  the  conditions  of  their  Hfe  as  from 
an  unexplored  continent  and  an  unknown  tract 
of  the  world.  That  is  the  difficulty  about  the 
whole  question  ;  and  for  that  reason  I  insist 
that  the  plane  of  experience  must  be  nar- 
rowed in  that  particular.  You  ask  me — to  be 
very  personal — if  I  hold  this  view,  that  no 
man  may  know  with  respect  to  the  future  life, 
why  it  is  that  I  hold  firmly  to  my  own  belief 
that  I  shall  never  die, — I  mean  In  the  sense 
of  being  snuffed  out  like  a  candle.  I  do 
not  expect  to  be  snuffed  out  like  candle, 
never  to  be  relighted.  Why  am  I  not  an 
agnostic  with  regard  to  that  in  the  plane 
of  my  own  belief  ?  For  this  simple  reason. 
What  I  know  is  that  I  am  alive.  Every  sense 
registers  it.  Think  of  it  !  The  sensory 
nerves,  coming  in  contact  with  some  external 
object,  telegraph  the  central  office  in  the  brain, 
and  the  message  goes  back  over  the  motor 
nerves,  and  an  act  follows.  That  goes  on  all 
the  time.  It  only  goes  on,  so  far  as  we  know, 
in  living  men  and  women.  I  know  I  am  alive. 
It  rests  upon  you  to  prove,  if  you  deny  that  I 
shall  live  for  ever,  that  I  shall  ever  die.  The 
consciousness  of   life  is   the  present  fact,  and 


The  Agnostic  45 

I  hold  this  relation  to  the  life  of  God  as  se- 
curing it  in  the  life  of  God  ;  and  I  hold  more 
than  that, — that  the  experience  of  life  and 
the  experience  of  the  love  of  the  Eternal 
and  the  sense  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God, 
the  sense  of  relationship  between  the  child 
and  God  his  Father,  is  so  real  that  I  cannot 
die  unless  God  dies.  I  cannot  understand 
how  the  Sum  of  Life  can  cut  me  off  as 
dead. 

The  best  things  in  life  are  the  things  you 
do  not  know  in  the  sense  that  the  agnostic 
says  they  cannot  be  known.  For  instance  in 
your  own  home  you  have  a  little  child.  When 
you  come  home  from  work,  she  climbs  up 
upon  your  knee  and  you  wonder  whether  she 
ought  to  ;  you  are  dusty  from  the  day's  work, 
and  you  wonder  what  the  mother  will  say 
if  there  is  a  speck  on  her  best  clothes  ;  but 
she  climbs  up  just  as  if  she  were  not  afraid 
of  dirt,  and  puts  her  arms  around  your  neck 
and  looking  into  your  eyes, — tired  eyes,  tired 
with  the  moving  panorama  of  the  world,  tired 
with  straining  all  the  acquisitive  power  of 
life  to  get  enough  to  keep  her  living  and 
get  her  educated  and  place  her  in  life — she 
says,  *'  Do  you  love  me  ? "  And  you  say, 
"  Why,  yes."     You  do  not  have  to  argue  that ; 


46  One  World  at  a  Time 

you  know  it !  You  do  not  have  to  calculate 
and  see  whether  you  really  love  her.  You 
can  shut  your  eyes  and  love  her.  All  the 
senses  might  have  gone  into  oblivion  for  a 
moment,  but  you  would  love  her.  So  you 
say  "  Yes."  And  she  says,  "  So  do  I."  And 
neither  of  you  knows  why.  You  could  not 
tell  anybody  that  asked  you  why.  If  you 
say  that  you  love  the  child  as  the  tigress 
loves  her  cub,  as  the  eagle  loves  its  young, 
I  say  to  you  that  between  the  way  in  which 
a  tigress  in  the  cage  will  turn  her  cub  over 
and  lick  it  and  paw  it  about  and  mumble  it 
with  every  sign  of  motherly  affection  for  it^ 
— the  difference  between  that  and  what  the 
woman  does  who  nurses  the  child,  and  would 
die  for  it,  separates  these  two  by  celestial  dia- 
meters. They  are  not  the  same  thing  at  all. 
The  instinct  of  motherhood  in  the  beast,  and 
the  instinct  of  spiritual  affection  in  the  wo- 
man, are  as  separate  as  two  things  can  be. 
All  the  best  things  in  life  are  the  things  we 
cannot  prove,  but  they  are  things  that  dwell 
in  the  very  consciousness  and  constitute  the 
experience  of  sensitive  souls. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  BELIEVER 

WE  come  first  of  all  to  the  importance  of 
the  subject  itself.  I  hold,  and  have 
maintained  throughout  these  pages,  that  re- 
lig-ion  is  a  natural  function  of  the  human  soul ; 
that  it  belongs  to  human  nature  ;  that  the  man 
who  has  religion  in  excess  is  as  ill-balanced  as 
the  man  who  has  it  deficiently.  There  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  call  a  dwarf  in  religion 
a  man,  or  why  we  should  call  a  freak  in  religion 
a  man  ;  because  religion  belongs  in  human  na- 
ture in  its  place,  proportioned  to  the  other 
faculties  of  the  human  mind.  It  is  not  the 
sole  business  of  man,  but  it  is  his  business, 
nevertheless.  The  importance  of  the  subject 
arises  not  only  from  the  fact  that  religion  is  a 
natural  function  of  the  human  creature, — that 
his  soul  is  adjusted  to  the  uses  of  its  spiritual 
functions  just  as  the  eye  to  light,  the  ear  to 
sound,  and  the  lungs  to  atmosphere, — not  only 
is  this  so,  but  the  beleiver  represents  the  only 

47 


48  One  World  at  a  Time 

operative  class  in  the  world  of  mind,  namely 
the  optimist.  I  believe  there  is  a  moral  use  in 
optimism  that  the  pessimist  never  can  reach  ; 
that  there  is  a  moral  function  for  the  optimist 
which  the  cynic  wholly  ignores  ;  that  the  op- 
timist, the  man  who  believes  not  that  things 
are  at  their  best,  but  that  things  are  coming  to 
their  best,  is  the  man  who  must  of  necessity 
be  classed  with  the  believers,  as  the  pessimist 
must  be  classed  with  the  deniers.  I  under- 
stand perfectly  well — every  man  of  experience 
must  understand — that  there  is  a  nether  side 
to  life,  that  it  is  not  all  shining  and  brilliant, 
that  it  is  not  all  fair  and  attractive.  The  man 
who  says  there  is  no  nether  side  of  life,  no 
tragedy  that  is  played  without  any  interval  be- 
tween the  acts,  no  pathos  that  wrings  the  heart 
and  drives  men  to  despair, — the  man  who  says 
there  is  no  nether  side  of  life,  is  not  an  optimist, 
he  is  an  idiot.  He  does  not  understand  that 
there  is  a  side  of  the  embroidery,  however 
beautiful  the  pattern  may  be  on  its  upper  side, 
that  when  it  is  reversed  seems  disaster  and 
contradiction,  and  the  stitches  all  awry  ;  and 
yet  the  optimist  and  the  believer  belong  to 
the  same  class  ;  they  belong  to  the  class 
that  has  in  charge  the  moral  triumph  of  the 
world. 


The  Believer  49 

Let  us  consider  certain  distinctions  between 
the  behever  as  the  representative  of  faith,  and 
what  have  been  mistaken  for  aspects  of  his  voca- 
tion. **  Faith  "  is  a  much  misunderstood  word. 
It  is  supposed  to  be  the  prerogative  of  people 
who  "  get  religion."  I  want  to  say  here  with 
great  distinctness  that  you  cannot  "  get  reli- 
gion ; "  you  cannot  get  rid  of  it.  It  is  in  the  fibre 
of  your  nature.  It  is  part  of  your  tissue.  It  is 
woven,  interwoven,  and  complexly  involved 
with  the  whole  structure  of  the  human  mind. 
People  get  up  in  the  morning  and  say,  "  Go  to, 
now,  I  am  going  to  get  religion  to-day."  They 
are  only  going  to  change  the  costume  of  their 
thinkinor  and  their  attitude  of  mind.  When 
evening  falls  they  will  not  have  got  any  new 
thing  whatever,  except  a  new  attitude  toward 
some  fancy  of  their  own.  So  the  word  "  faith," 
as  thought  to  beloncr  to  the  religrious  world 
alone,  is  misunderstood.  I  have  said  religion 
is  a  function  of  the  human  soul.  Faith  is  the 
exercise  of  that  function.  There  is  a  passage 
in  the  New  Testament  which  declares  that 
"  faith  is  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for, 
the  evidence  of  thino^s  not  seen."  There  is 
a  better  definition  of  faith  given  by  a  mod- 
ern man,  more  easily  understood,  more  strik- 
ingly stated,  it  seems  to  me,  less  invested  with 


so  One  World  at  a  Time 

mysticism,  more  practical  to  the  common  mind. 
He  declares  that  "  Faith  is  the  conviction  that 
in  the  universe  there  is  something  that  corre- 
sponds to  my  best."  That  is  the  attitude  of 
faith.  "In  the  universe  there  is  something 
that  corresponds  to  my  best."  When  I  am  at 
my  best,  the  universe  and  I  are  in  intimate 
correspondence. 

Let  me  give  you  an  illustration  of  the  uses 
of  faith  in  other  aspects  than  religious.  Take 
the  man  who  believes  in  himself.  We  all 
have  to  be  on  good  terms  with  ourselves  if  we 
are  to  live  comfortably  in  the  world  and  do 
any  good  work.  The  man  who  hates  himself 
has  sapped  the  energy  of  his  purpose  in  life. 
The  discouraged  man  has  to  get  over  his 
discouragement  before  he  does  any  good  work. 
Self-respect  is  of  the  very  essence  of  moral  char- 
acter. The  man  who  believes  in  himself  is  an 
example  of  faith  as  a  natural  function.  He 
believes  he  is  a  man  of  destiny,  that  he  is  a 
man  of  power,  of  opportunity,  that  he  has  fac- 
ulties which  he  must  seriously  consider  and 
constantly  use.  When  his  faith  in  himself  is 
excessive,  he  is  known  as  an  egotist, — that  is, 
he  travels  with  the  sign  of  the  perpendicular 
pronoun  all  the  time,  and  "  I,  I,  I,"  stands 
as   a   kind    of   exclamation    point    of   all   the 


The  Believer  51 

performance  of  his  Hfe.  A  most  unpleasant 
man  !  But  he  simply  has  faith  in  himself  in 
excess,  which  is  as  genuine  a  faith  as  a  man 
ever  felt  in  moments  of  worship.  He  is  his 
own  idol,  and  worships  at  his  own  shrine. 

Take  the  man  who  believes  profoundly  in 
his  fellows.  He  believes  in  the  "  essential 
dignity  of  human  nature,"  as  Dr.  Channing 
would  phrase  it.  He  believes  in  the  "  sov- 
ereignity of  the  human  mind  "  as  George  Will- 
iam Curtis  would  have  said.  He  believes  in 
the  capacity  of  human  nature  for  all  good. 
He  does  not  believe  in  man  "as ruined,  but  as 
incomplete,"  and  that  he  rises  by  continual 
ascent  in  a  way  that  discounts  and  contradicts 
the  old  doctrine  of  the  "  fall  of  man."  Man 
never  fell.  He  has  been  rising  since  the  be- 
crinninor.  This  man  believes  in  his  fellows. 
They  are  his  fellows  ;  they  are  not  strangers 
to  him,  not  alien.  He  lives  the  line  in  Ter- 
ence's play  which  electrified  and  astonished 
the  Roman  audience  that  first  heard  it, — "  I  am 
a  man,  and  nothing  that  is  human  is  foreign  to 
me."  This  man  believes  in  his  fellows.  We 
call  him  a  lover  of  his  kind,  a  philanthropist ; 
and  he  loves  them  so  much  that  he  is  not  part- 
icular that  they  shall  be  just  his  kind.  He 
will  allow    them    to  be   a  variation   from   his 


52  One  World  at  a  Time 

kind,  and  love  them  still.  He  is  an  example 
of  the  exercise  of  faith  in  an  object  that  is 
worthy  of  its  bestowal. 

Carry  now  the  exercise  of  faith  to  its  limit 
as  applied  to  the  Infinite  and  Eternal.  The 
believer,  the  man  of  faith,  who  has  come  into 
correspondence  with  the  Ultimate  Reality  in 
the  universe,  who  may  call  that  Ultimate 
Reality  by  a  name  that  is  in  no  liturgy  nor  in 
any  scripture,  but  who  has  projected  his  life 
upon  the  confidence  that  God  is,  by  whatever 
name  he  may  be  known, — that  man  is  exercis- 
ing the  same  faculty  exactly  as  the  man  who 
believed  in  himself  and  the  man  who  believed 
in  his  fellows  ;  but  he  is  believing  profoundly 
in  that  Ultimate  Reality  which  in  moments  of 
divine  communion  he  calls  the  Great  Compan- 
ion, and  in  moments  of  revery  seems  to  him 
the  very  palpitating  heart  of  the  universe  it- 
self. He  is  a  believer  in  God.  Now  if  you 
dispute  the  term,  I  am  not  particular  about  it. 
To  one  who  asked  me  if  I  was  not  playing 
fast  and  loose  with  that  term,  I  gave  the  an- 
swer which  I  repeat  now.  I  care  nothing  for 
the  term.  In  all  the  world,  no  human  being, 
from  the  most  developed  saint  of  any  creed  or 
kind  or  relio-ion,  down  to  the  creature  who 
bowing  down  before  stock  or  stone  worships 


The  Believer  53 

there,  was  ever  left  unheard  by  the  Being 
who  made  him.  If  the  saint  has  his  idea  of 
God,  and  the  savage  his  symbol, — the  totem- 
stick,  or  whatever  it  may  be, — that  is  simply  a 
question  not  of  religion  but  of  development. 
The  mystic,  to  whom  God  has  no  form  nor 
name,  simply  represents  the  other  antithesis, 
the  extreme,  the  ultimate  pole  from  this  un- 
developed savage  with  his  stone  image  or  his 
totem-stick.  He  only  represents  religion  in 
another  aspect  of  its  development.  The  name 
is  never  the  Reality.  It  is  for  faith  in  that 
which  is  above  all  names  I  plead. 

Let  us  come  to  certain  other  distinctions. 
Faith  is  not  synonymous  with  credulity.  Cred- 
ulity Is  simply  the  open  mouth  of  the  sewer, 
with  the  lay  of  the  land  in  that  direction  ;  so 
that  you  only  need  a  freshet  to  fill  the  drain. 
It  may  be  clean  water  that  runs  in.  It  may 
be  the  very  distilled  snows  of  heaven.  But 
still  the  open  mouth  receives  it,  unquestioning, 
and  the  transit  of  it  from  the  conduit  is  unim- 
peded. That  is  the  attitude  of  credulity,  which 
accepts  whatever  it  is  asked  to  accept.  It  has 
an  unfailing  appetite  and  an  unappeased  curios- 
ity, and  the  sceptic  is  as  likely  to  be  credulous 
as  any  other  man  in  the  world.  I  will  give  you 
an  illustration  of  the  kind  of  thing  that  happens. 


54  One  World  at  a  Time 

A  woman  said  to  me  years  ago  :  "  I  think  it 
is  about  time  my  daughters  were  learning 
something  about  the  Christian  religion."  I 
said  I  thought  it  would  be  a  good  plan.  She 
proposed  to  send  them  to  a  class  I  was  hold- 
ing, and  said  :  "  My  daughters  are  so  ignorant 
of  the  Christian  religion  that  they  asked  me  a 
question  the  other  day  that  surprised  me. 
They  know  all  about  other  religions."  I  con- 
gratulated her,  but  I  wanted  to  say  that  there 
were  people,  like  Max  Miiller,  who  had  studied 
all  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  and  would 
not  claim  that.  She  said :  "  My  daughters 
asked  me  this  question — '  Mother,  who  lived 
first,  Moses  or  Jesus?'"  "Well,"  I  replied, 
*'  that  was  rather  an  astonishing  question  for 
grown-up  people  to  ask."  Just  to  try  her  as  to 
this  credulous  attitude, — she  was  an  excellent 
woman,  full  of  all  good  works,  and  not  full  of 
good  knowledge, — I  added  to  her :  "  I  would 
not  have  been  surprised  if  your  daughters  had 
wondered  who  lived  first,  Jesus  or  Moham- 
med." "Oh,"  she  said,  "they  could  not  have 
made  that  mistake.  If  there  had  been  no 
Mohammed  there  could  not  have  been  any 
Christ."  She  was  only  six  hundred  years  out 
of  the  way  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  Christian 
Era.     That  is  the  credulous  attitude  of  mind 


The  Believer  55 

that  beheves  the  new  thing  proposed  the  real 
thingf,  because  it  is  so  new  it  has  not  lost 
the  tag  off  it  yet.  That  is  not  faith.  That 
person  is  not  a  believer.  He  is  simply  a  man 
with  a  morbid  appetite  for  receiving  things 
without  examination,  without  test.  This  man 
is  not  a  believer,  he  is  a  mere  receiver,  whether 
his  credulity  be  pseudo-scientific,  the  credulity 
of  the  man  who  reads  the  newspaper,  or  the 
credulity  of  a  corrupt  official,  for  instance,  who 
believes  all  the  things  he  wants  to  believe,  or 
whether  it  be  the  credulity  of  the  religious 
man,  the  man  whose  mind  has  been  filled  up 
with  everything  that  comes  to  hand.  The 
tip-cart  of  the  world's  knowledge  has  just  been 
backed  up  to  his  mind  and  dumped  in.  He  is 
not  a  man  of  faith.  He  is  a  man  of  varied 
and  unassorted  beliefs,  and  is  not,  therefore, 
in  the  best  sense,  a  believer.  That  distinction 
must  be  made  between  faith  and  credulity. 

A  distinction  must  also  be  made  between 
faith  and  speculation.  There  is  a  speculative 
quality  in  the  mind  for  which  I  have  contended 
in  these  pages.  The  sceptic,  as  the  inquirer, 
must  have  all  things  subject  to  him  by  way  of 
stimulus  to  the  desire  to  know.  But  the  spec- 
ulative plane  of  thought  is  not  the  plane  of 
the  religious  life.      It  is  wholly  different.      Re- 


56  One  World  at  a  Time 

ligion  is  met  upon  the  plane  of  the  practical 
reason  and  not  upon  the  plane  of  the  speculat- 
ive intellect.  The  passage  has  to  be  made  in 
theology  from  the  plane  of  the  speculative 
intellect  to  the  plane  of  the  practical  reason,  or 
you  would  never  get  applied  Christianity  or 
applied  anything  else  in  the  name  of  religion. 
The  trouble  with  the  theological  world  has 
always  been  that  it  has  been  content  to  specu- 
late with  infinite  variety  upon  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  subjects,  about  most  of  which  no  human 
being  can  know  anything  at  all.  The  exercise 
has  been  immensely  entertaining,  but  it  has 
not  built  up  the  religious  life.  It  has  strength- 
ened the  mind  of  the  speculative  reasoner 
because  it  has  given  what  any  mental  exercise 
will  give,  increased  power  of  concentration  and 
ability  to  handle  his  own  thought.  But  always 
before  he  was  through,  he  had  to  make  the 
descent  from  the  plane  of  speculative  reason- 
ing to  the  plane  of  practical  reasoning. 

A  distinction  must  be  made  also  between 
the  believer  and  the  nominally  religious  man. 
There  is  a  great  contempt  abroad  for  the 
"professor  of  religion."  It  is  partly  justified, 
and  partly  unjust.  I  have  the  good  fortune 
to  belong  to  a  church  that  does  not  put  any 
premium  upon  a  man's  making   a  profession 


The  Believer  57 

of  religion.  It  puts  a  vast  deal  more  empha- 
sis upon  the  character  of  the  man,  and  the 
question  of  his  alliance  with  a  church  of  any 
form  of  faith  that  he  is  satisfied  to  assume 
is  left  entirely  to  his  own  private  judgment. 
Still,  I  believe  in  the  Church,  or  I  would  not 
be  a  minister  of  religion  in  charge  of  a  church  ; 
but  I  believe  in  the  Church  as  an  assemblage 
of  people  given  over  to  an  earnest  devotion 
to  the  will  of  God,  not  an  assemblage  of  peo- 
ple whom  you  can  designate  by  the  badge 
they  wear  or  the  phrase  they  use.  In  the  Egyp- 
tian Book  of  the  Dead,  among  the  splendid 
passages  that  are  written  concerning  the  soul 
as  it  goes  up  to  be  weighed  and  passed  on 
into  the  Courts  of  the  Blessed, — in  that  ancient 
document,  antedating  by  at  least  twenty-five 
hundred  years  probably  by  four  thousand 
years,  the  era  we  call  Christian, — this  signifi- 
cant thing  is  added  to  all  the  other  virtues : 
"he  hath  the  right  tone."  It  does  not  mean 
what  we  mean  by  a  "high-toned"  man,  a  man 
of  right  character.  It  means  that  he  could 
say  the  holy  things  in  the  holy  way.  It 
means  what  old  Betty  Higden  meant,  in  one 
of  Dickens's  stories,  when  she  cuffs  her  son 
for  reading  the  newspaper  in  a  sing-song,  and 
says  :  "  How  dare   ye  read  the  paper  in  the 


58  One  World  at  a  Time 

Bible  twang ! "  The  Egyptian  Book  of  the 
Dead  means  the  man  who  can  say  the  holy 
things  in  the  holy  way.  That  has  gone  out 
of  use  except  in  rare  and  isolated  instances. 
There  is  only  one  tone  for  character  and  for 
religion  together.  So  that  the  distinction 
must  be  made  between  the  "  professor  of  re- 
ligion "  and  the  man  of  faith.  Many  a  man 
of  supreme  faith  has  never  been  a  professor  of 
religion  in  the  nominal  and  usual  sense  of 
that  word.  The  deep,  profound,  earnest  con- 
victions of  life  are  not  easily  adjusted  to  the 
usual  demands  of  the  church  as  to  its  mem- 
bership or  the  articles  of  a  creed.  The  pro- 
fessor of  religion  is  not,  therefore,  in  this 
statement,  to  be  confused  with  the  believer. 
He  may  belong  under  both  designations,  but, 
because  he  is  despised  by  you,  for  instance, 
as  a  member  of  a  church,  he  should  not,  there- 
fore, be  dismissed  without  investigation  as  to 
whether  he  is  really  a  believer  or  not ;  and  for 
this  reason  I  come  now  to  the  major  thing  I 
desire  to  say  to  you. 

Religion,  I  have  said,  is  a  natural  function 
of  the  human  creature.  It  belong-s  to  man. 
By  virtue  of  it  all  art  in  its  appeal  to  the 
aesthetic  nature  has  its  share  in  religfion. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  without  it  three  things 


The  Believer  59 

would  never  have  been  for  your  edifica- 
tion,— the  great  works  of  sculpture  and  paint- 
ing in  the  graphic  arts  ;  the  great  works  of 
architecture,  where  religion  was  enshrined, 
sometimes  buried  ;  and  the  third  thing  that 
would  not  have  been  left  to  you  is  the  work 
of  the  musical  world,  most  of  which  we  should 
not  have  had  but  for  the  contribution  of  re- 
ligion to  it ;  and  still  a  fourth  thing — your 
boys  would  have  no  Latin  and  Greek  classics 
to  study  in  the  schools  if  it  had  not  happened 
that  when  Cassiodorus  was  secretary  to  the 
Eastern  Emperor  in  the  sixth  century,  he 
found  on  his  hands  a  lot  of  monks,  whom  he 
set  to  work  copying  the  Latin  and  Greek  clas- 
sics, thus  preserved  to  this  age.  So,  even 
in  the  schools  themselves  there  is  this  ser- 
vice done  by  religion  as  a  servitor  of  man, 
creating  and  preserving  art  and  literature 
in  an  ag-e  when  the  learned  and  servants  of 
art  were  to  be  found  only  in  the  churches  of 
Europe. 

The  main  reason  for  declaring  for  the  be- 
liever as  the  exponent  of  religion  is  that  the 
believer  represents  a  quality  in  the  mind  rather 
than  expression  on  the  tongue.  I  am  very 
anxious  to  have  you  understand  that  religion 
is  not  only  natural,  but  is  easiest  handled  and 


6o  One  World  at  a  Time 

most  potent  when  reduced  to  its  simplest 
terms.  Religion,  faith  as  its  expression,  and 
the  believer  as  its  exponent,  represent  a  quality 
of  mind  based  in  reverence.  Is  it  not  true 
that  there  is  a  grave  danger  that  the  quality  of 
reverence  shall  disappear  from  the  younger 
life  of  our  time  ?  Things  pass  so  readily  be- 
fore the  mind,  so  easily  command  the  atten- 
tion, the  world  is  so  interesting,  so  various, 
so  multiform,  its  industries  are  so  many,  its 
pressure  is  so  great,  that  the  meditative  qual- 
ity, the  brooding  faculty,  the  power  to  take  a 
thing  and  hold  the  mind  over  it  until  it  in- 
cubates the  egg  of  thought,  until  it  brings  the 
singing  thing  out  of  the  egg  that  was  in  the 
nest  of  the  moment, — that  quality  declines  ever 
more  and  more  in  this  time  in  which  we  live, 
in  this  land  in  which  we  live.  The  German 
child,  the  English  child  is  more  deferential  than 
the  American  child.  The  American  child  has 
been  a  little  nineteenth-century  philosopher. 
The  twentieth  century  is  now  on  his  hands, 
and  he  knows  not  what  to  do  with  it.  He 
is  deferred  to,  he  is  coddled,  and  cared  for ; 
he  has  more  playthings  than  he  can  play  with  ; 
he  grows  tired  of  the  things  heaped  upon  him. 
He  lives  in  the  rattle  and  bang  of  a  great  city 
perhaps,  and  grooves  are  made  in  his  brain  by 


The  Believer  6i 

the  mere  impact  of  noise,  until  I  have  known 
children  of  the  poorer  East  Side  homes  to 
whom  the  most  dreadful  thing  in  the  world 
was  silence  ;  they  could  not  endure  to  be  si- 
lent. It  is  the  growing  shame  of  every  great 
city,  the  intolerable  burden  of  men  and  women 
of  the  poorer  class  of  the  great  city,  that  they 
never  have  the  privilege  of  being  alone  ;  which 
the  human  mind  needs.  The  human  mind 
needs  to  be  alone  with  itself.  It  needs  to  be 
quiet  and  to  brood  and  fashion  its  own  life  out 
of  "  reverence  for  the  things  that  are  above," 
as  Goethe  has  said,  "  for  the  things  that  are 
around,  and  for  the  thinofs  below."  That  is  an 
essential  quality  of  the  well-ordered  mind. 
The  things  above  provoke  it  to  worship  ; 
the  things  around  produce  in  it  the  sense  of 
fellowship ;  reverence  for  the  things  below 
inspires  it  to  the  great  compassions  of  life. 
Reverence  is  an  essential  quality  of  the  well- 
ordered  and  normal  mind,  and  the  believer 
is  dealing  with  the  reverential  quality  in  the 
mind.  Your  children  are  sometimes  a  surprise 
to  you  by  what  they  say.  You  think  them  ir- 
reverent. No  ;  it  is  the  wonder-element  in 
them,  born  of  their  very  reverence.  They  live 
in  a  world  of  mythology,  of  fancy,  of  fairy 
stories.     They  say  things  about  the  Eternal 


62  One  World  at  a  Time 

that  seem  very  comical  and  sometimes  irrever- 
ent. But  it  is  their  very  reverence  that  leads 
them  to  say  these  things, — that  is,  if  they  have 
been  brought  up  under  conditions  of  reverence 
in  the  household.  That  same  wonder-element 
in  the  childhood  of  the  race  produced  the  mir- 
acle, produced  the  prophet,  and  religion  for 
many  and  many  a  generation  was  supported 
upon  the  two  great  pillars  of  prophecy  and  of 
miracle.  Take  any  of  the  old  books  about 
religion.  You  will  find  the  argument  for  re- 
vealed religion  to  be  that  prophets  prophesied 
what  came  to  pass,  and  miracles  were  per- 
formed to  prove  that  the  prophecy  was  true. 
That  is  short  and  easy  ;  but  it  is  not  true.  In 
the  first  place,  most  of  the  prophets  were  not 
prophesying ;  they  were  talking  about  some- 
thing in  their  minds  and  hearts ;  for  their  own 
time  they  were  the  statesmen  of  Israel,  deal- 
ing with  great  state  questions.  For  instance, 
the  Book  of  Daniel,  which  has  been  regarded 
as  a  great  prophecy,  was  not  a  prophecy.  It 
was  written  about  i6o  b.  c,  and  was  a  war  doc- 
ument intended  to  inflame  the  patriotism  of 
the  Jews.  The  time  came,  however,  when  this 
structure  of  the  temple  of  religion,  standing 
upon  its  two  pillars  of  miracle  and  pro- 
phecy, built  out  of  the  wonder-element  in  the 


The  Believer  63 

primitive  mind,  was  entered,  as  the  bhnd  Sam- 
son entered  the  temple  of  Dagon,  by  the 
giant  we  know  as  Common-sense,  ordinary  rea- 
son, natural  penetration  ;  as  Samson  came 
into  the  temple  of  the  Philistines,  and,  led  by 
his  guide,  the  blind  giant  flung  his  arms  about 
the  two  pillars  on  which  the  great  temple  was 
supported,  bowed  himself  between  them,  and 
pulled  the  building  down  upon  his  enemies, 
so  Common-sense  entered  into  the  temple 
of  Religion,  supported  upon  its  pillars  of 
miracle  and  prophecy,  and  bowed  himself  be- 
tween them,  and  they  fell,  and  the  literary 
world  of  criticism  took  up  their  fragments  to 
examine  them  ;  btit  the  temple  stood !  The 
temple  stood  !  Why  ?  Because  it  did  not 
really  rest  on  miracle  and  prophecy.  It  rested 
upon  the  profoundest  convictions  of  the  hu- 
man soul  and  the  ultimate  reality  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  and  the  theologians  had  come  in  and 
built  up  other  supports  in  contradiction  of  the 
well-known  architectural  rule  that  you  shall 
not  put  a  support  that  does  not  sustain  any 
weight.  They  built  up  these  supports  under 
the  structure,  and  able  scholars  in  divinity 
schools  and  in  churches  taught  that  miracle 
and  prophecy  were  the  props  of  the  Christ- 
ian system.      But  the  temple  of    religion  was 


64  One  World  at  a  Time 

older  than  these  artificial  supports  ;  it  was 
founded  on  human  nature  and  buttressed  in 
the  needs  of  men. 

Still  further,  the  believer  represents  not  only 
an  attitude  of  mind  based  on  reverence,  he  re- 
presents a  quality  of  life. 

I  like  those  phrases,  the  "  low-grade  "  man, 
and  the  "  high-toned "  man.  I  was  speak- 
ing on  a  platform  one  night,  and  a  'cello, 
strung  just  as  the  musician  had  set  it  down,  was 
standing  behind  me,  and  as  I  spoke  I  could 
hear  it  answer.  Every  tone  of  my  voice  was 
taken  up  by  the  tense  strings  of  the  musical 
instrument,  which  repeated  behind  me  the 
thing  I  was  saying  to  the  audience.  So  is 
the  high-toned  man,  strung  to  the  tension  of 
his  greatest  power;  he  makes  the  music  of 
the  world  by  the  virtues  which  he  discourses 
to  the  world  in  which  he  is  placed.  He  is 
high-strung,  he  is  "  high-toned."  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  the  man  that  is  put  together  so 
loosely  that  I  should  suppose,  when  he  was 
made  he  was  made  just  out  of  ordinary  tow, 
and  they  forgot  to  put  in  any  twist.  You 
have  seen  such  a  man.  He  will  not  bear 
a  pound's  strain.  He  frays  out,  pulls  apart. 
He  is  just  oakum  that  has  ceased  to  be  rope 
and    can    be    used    only   as    filling.      As   the 


The  Believer  65 

calker,  with  this  frayed-out,  tarred  rope  that  has 
been  brought  into  this  fluffy  condition,  calks 
up  the  seams  in  the  old  ships  hauled  up  for 
repair.  That  is  the  kind  of  man  that  cannot 
be  religious  ;  he  cannot  be  a  believer  until  he 
gets  over  the  condition  of  slackness  of  soul,  of 
the  loose  quality  of  his  mind.  For  religion  is 
not  something  to  be  left,  as  men  so  super- 
ciliously say,  to  women  and  children.  If  the 
women  had  not  cared  for  it  it  would  not 
have  lasted  for  men.  It  would  not  have  been 
in  the  world  to-day  but  for  the  essentially  re- 
ligious quality  in  women.  It  was  a  right  in- 
stinct in  the  Catholic  Church  that  put  in 
her  place  the  mother  of  Christ  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  religion  in  an  age  when  human 
nature  was  so  meanly  thought  of  that  only 
a  miraculous  birth  and  a  pure  virgin  could  be 
the  representatives  of  religion.  No  ;  the  time 
has  gone  by  when  we  can  leave  religion  to 
women  and  children.  It  takes  a  good  deal  of 
a  man  to  be  a  believer,  because  of  the  quality 
of  life  that  it  involves.  The  reason  that  so 
few  people  are  genuine  believers  is  that  the 
strain  is  so  great — not  upon  credulity,  but  upon 
integrity. 

This  brings  me  to  a  point  to  which  I  want 
your  attention  with  all  the  fixedness  that  you 


66  One  World  at  a  Time 

can  command.  A  man  who  is  a  genuine 
believer  has  as  a  fundamental  postulate  in  his 
thinking,  the  belief  that  this  world  is  essentially 
moral.  He  believes  in  the  essential  integrity 
of  the  universe.  The  other  type  of  man  be- 
lieves that  there  is  a  "  short  cut  across-lots." 
He  thinks  there  is  some  indirect  way  by  which 
he  can  achieve  his  ends.  Whereas,  if  he  is  a 
business  man  he  knows  if  that  were  true  the 
business  of  the  world  would  not  last  five  years. 
The  business  world  is  built  up,  with  all  its  de- 
fects, with  all  its  want  of  commercial  integrity, 
as  we  sometimes  see  it, — it  is  built  up  upon 
the  abiding  conviction  that  morality  is  an  es- 
sential part  of  human  life.  Yesterday  the  busi- 
ness world  did  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  its  work 
upon  credit.  If  you  were,  because  you  dis- 
believed in  common  integrity,  to  call  back, 
during  this  new  century  upon  which  we  have 
entered,  the  whole  business  of  the  world  to  a 
cash  basis,  you  would  destroy  the  commerce 
of  this  country  before  the  year  was  out.  No  ; 
it  is  because  human  nature  is  essentially  de- 
pendable ;  because  the  universe  is  essentially 
moral  ;  because  the  vast  majority  of  people  are 
really  honest,  that  the  great  mass  of  business 
in  the  world  every  day  of  the  world's  life  is 
done  upon  a  system  of  credit. 


The  Believer  67 

The  common  beHef  in  the  integrity  of  man 
must  be  carried  through  and  apphed  to  the 
universe  at  large.  The  universe  is  man's 
home.  If  man  himself  is  essentially  honest,  as 
I  believe  he  is  ;  if  he  is  essentially  right,  as  I 
believe  he  is,  the  universe  must  be  of  the  same 
kind.  His  environment  and  himself  must 
come  together  on  even  terms.  I  believe  that 
the  only  solution  of  life  is  on  the  basis  that  the 
universe  from  core  to  rim,  from  centre  to  cir- 
cumference, is  moral  through  and  through. 
In  your  school  life  you  learned  this  axiom  : 
"  A  straight  line  is  the  shortest  distance 
between  two  points."  It  is  just  as  true  in 
morals.  You  learned  that  "  The  whole  cannot 
be  greater  than  the  sum  of  all  its  parts."  It  is 
just  the  same  in  morals.  You  learned  that 
"  Two  things  equal  to  the  same  thing  are  equal 
to  each  other."  These  mathematical  axioms 
that  are  the  very  substance  and  foundation  of 
the  science  of  geometry  are  also  axiomatic  in 
the  moral  world.  Directness  of  intention,  sin- 
cerity that  is  crystalline  and  clear  —  these  are 
qualities  a  man  must  have  in  a  universe  he 
believes  to  be  moral.  He  can  so  be  a  believer  ; 
and  not  on  any  other  terms  whatever. 

I  want  to  call  your  attention,  finally,  to  cert- 
ain conditions  under  which  the  believer  lives. 


68  One  World  at  a  Time 

The  first  is  a  sense  of  proportion.  I  belong 
to  a  class  of  people  —  ministers  of  religion  — 
who  I  suppose  show  the  gravest  defect  in  this 
particular  of  any  class  in  the  world.  The 
ministry  of  religion  has  been  said  to  be  con- 
scientiously and  consistently  disproportionate 
in  its  thinking.  For  instance,  it  has  empha- 
sised the  other  world  and  not  this.  It  has 
emphasised  the  spiritual  and  not  the  natural  ; 
revelation  and  not  Nature  ;  miracle  and  not 
common  force  ;  prophecy,  and  not  plain  sense  ; 
prayer  and  not  work.  It  has  emphasised  death 
and  not  life,  and  feels  that  its  churches  are 
more  to  be  maintained  than  the  truth. 
Let  the  ministry  work  out  its  own  salvation. 
Sometimes  it  will  be  saved  because  it  is  really 
true.  Sometimes  it  will  have  to  take  refuge, 
probably,  in  the  general  amnesty  that  is  given 
to  unconquerable  ignorance.  But  in  the  com- 
mon mind,  in  the  average  layman,  if  he  is  to 
be  a  believer  in  a  world  that  is  worth  living  in, 
the  sense  of  proportion  must  have  a  promin- 
ent place  in   the  ordering  of  his  thinking. 

Proportioned  thinking,  giving  to  every  phase 
of  life  and  character  its  due  proportion,  is  ac- 
companied, in  the  next  place,  by  crystalline 
sincerity.  You  cannot  believe  anything  that  is 
worth  believing  which  has  to  do  with  character 


The  Believer  69 

until  you  have  purged  your  mind  of  all  cant. 
Never  say  the  thing  that  you  do  not  believe. 
Never  think  the  thing  that  you  cannot  summon 
before  the  bar  of  reason  and  adjudge  its  place 
and  value.  Never  use  an  influence  that  you 
do  not  want  used  for  you.  Take  no  attitude 
toward  the  great  realities  for  another  mind 
that  you  would  not  assume  for  yourself.  Take 
no  attitude  for  yourself  that  you  would  not  be 
willing  to  be  found  in  if  God  should  call  you 
that  moment  to  your  account.  You  say  these 
are  high  qualities.  They  are  not  too  lofty  for 
a  man  to  claim  for  himself.  A  man  knows 
whether  he  is  a  clean  man  or  not.  A  man 
knows  whether  he  is  dealing  with  things  in  a 
shifty  way  or  not.  He  knows  whether  he  is 
using  words  in  two  senses  or  only  in  the  sense 
in  which  they  can  be  used.  He  knows  whether 
he  is  shuffling  and  shifty  in  the  attitude  he  has 
toward  life.  He  has  a  right  to  say  that  he  is 
absolutely  and  entirely  sincere  in  his  own  judg- 
ment ;  and  he  cannot  believe  anything  that  is 
worth  believing  unless  he  is.  It  is  not  worth 
while  for  a  man  to  live  who  has  a  debate  with 
himself  for  ever,  who  has  to  arrange  all  the 
things  he  has  ever  said  or  thought,  before  he 
can  say  the  next  thing.  That  is  a  farce  with- 
out being  interesting, — the   worst    kind  of  a 


70  One  World  at  a  Time 

farce  ever  put  on  the  boards.  The  secret  of 
the  directness  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  that 
he  had  no  debate  with  himself.  When  they 
said  to  him,  "  Shall  we  pay  tribute  to  Caesar  or 
no  ?  "  he  said,  "  Show  me  a  coin."  And  they 
showed  him  a  denarius.  He  said,  "  Whose 
image  and  superscription  Is  this  ?  "  They  said, 
"  Csesar's."  Then  he  said,  "  Give  unto  Caesar 
the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the 
things  that  are  God's." 

There  was  a  man  In  the  synagogue  who  had 
a  withered  hand,  so  the  story  says,  and  they 
watched  Jesus  whether  he  would  heal  him  on 
the  Sabbath  day.  Think  of  their  state  of 
mind,  that  they  watched  the  Great  Benefactor 
to  know  If  he  would  be  kind  to  a  helpless  crip- 
ple on  the  Sabbath  day  !  He,  perceiving  their 
thought,  said  unto  the  man,  "Stand  forth." 
Then  turning  to  that  group  of  people  whom  he 
knew,  he  said,  "  Is  It  right  to  do  good  or  evil 
on  the  Sabbath  day,  to  save  life  or  to  kill  ?  " 
And  they  answered  him  not  a  word.  That 
was  a  straightforward  question  that  could  be 
answered  by  sincere  minds,  and  they  were  not 
up  to  It.  They  held  their  peace.  The  story 
goes  on  to  say  that  the  helpless  man  was  told 
to  stretch  forth  his  withered  hand.  You  can 
see  the  palsied  hand  pointing  out  uncertainly 


The  Believer  7^ 

into  that  audience  which  could  not  answer  a 
straightforward  question.  And  the  Master 
said  to  him,  "  Go  unto  thy  home.  Thou  art 
healed."  That  was  the  way  in  which  he  dealt 
directly  with  men,  because  he  had  no  debate 
with  himself.  He  had  not  to  ask  himself 
whether  he  thought  so  and  so,  before  he  could 
say  what  he  thought  to  other  men. 

So  I  leave  with  you  this  subject  of  The 
Believer,  hoping  that  you  belong  to  the  great 
multitude  of  those  who  are  profoundly  be- 
lievers in  something  that  is  worth  while.  If 
you  ask  me  where  you  shall  begin,  I  say.  Be- 
gin with  these  three  qualities,  two  of  which  I 
have  already  named.  First,  begin  by  putting 
the  emphasis  In  life  where  it  belongs,  in  due 
proportion.  Begin  by  dealing  with  yourself  in 
terms  of  absolute  sincerity,  and  then  add  to 
that  a  passion  for  righteousness  that  shall  leave 
you  a  believer  in  the  essential  righteousness  of 
the  universe,  although  you  may  doubt  every 
proposition  that  has  ever  been  proposed  by  the 
Church  of  God.  A  passion  for  righteousness 
Is  the  very  essence  of  faith, — a  faith  that  Is 
represented  In  the  Beatitude  as  "  hunger  and 
thirst  for  righteousness."  Fronting  the  cen- 
tury of  promise,  and  looking  back  over  the  cen- 
tury that  has  been  a  century  of  emancipation, 


72  One  World  at  a  Time 

not  for  the  slave  only,  but  for  the  human 
mind — standing  here  and  looking  out  upon  the 
new  century,  give  the  weight  of  your  faith  to 
the  idea  of  being  faithful ;  give  the  emphasis 
of  your  mind  to  the  Ultimate  Reality  that  is  in 
the  universe,  and  is  the  substance  and  sum  of 
its  life  ;  give  your  love  and  labour  to  that, 
and  whenever  the  time  shall  come  in  which 
you  answer  the  roll-call,  saying,  "  I  am  here," 
you  shall  be  able  to  look  into  the  faces  of 
those  that  are  about  you  unashamed,  because 
at  least  one  thing  in  life  you  believed  pro- 
foundly and  fully,  and  followed  it  to  the  end. 


CHAPTER  IV 

FROM  THE  SERMON   ON  THE  MOUNT 
TO  THE  NICENE  CREED 


F 


ROM  the  earliest  apprehension  of  God  as 
actual  to  the  final  conclusion  that  "  God 
is  All "  the  ascent  of  the  mind  is  immense.  It 
constitutes  the  history  of  the  soul's  life.  In  the 
passage  from  worship  as  fear  to  worship  in  love 
one  marks  the  development  from  polytheism 
to  monotheism.  The  Jews,  a  people  of  re- 
ligious genius,  accomplished  this  passage  early, 
and  they  maintain  its  conclusion  still.  The 
Semite  rises  out  of  polytheism  to  the  concep- 
tion that  God  is  One.  The  Aryan  rises  out 
of  a  terrestrial  polytheism  to  a  polytheism  no 
less  evident  though  celestial.  To  the  Semite 
one  God  is  an  intellectual  certainty  and  a 
moral  inspiration.  To  the  Aryan  many  gods 
are  a  necessity  and  a  hindrance  to  ethical 
unity.  The  Jew,  the  finest  product  of  the 
Semitic  stock,  raises  his  hands  in  prayer  and 
utters  his  creed  :  "  Hear,  O  Israel,  the  Lord 
our  God,  the  Lord  is  One." 

73 


74  One  World  at  a  Time 

The  supreme  flower  of  the  Jewish  genius 
for  reHgion  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  He  was  a 
Jew  in  body,  in  mind,  and  in  motive;  a  Jew 
after  the  pattern  of  those  sturdy  defenders  of 
splrituahty  in  reHgion,  Amos,  Micah,  Joel,  and 
Isaiah  ;  a  Jew  appearing  in  a  time  of  decay  of 
spiritual  worship  to  declare  that  God  is  Spirit ; 
a  Jew  surveying  the  formalism  of  his  age  to 
declare  that  "  the  pure  in  heart  shall  see  God  "  ; 
a  Jew  renewing  the  ancient  hope  of  God's 
Kingdom  and  its  Messiah,  but  declaring  :  "It 
cometh  not  with  outward  show  but  is  within 
you  "  ;  a  Jew  suspected  of  making  Innovations 
upon  the  ancient  faith,  but  answering  him  who 
asks  for  the  "  greatest  of  all  commandments  " 
In  the  words  he  had  repeated  each  day  In  the 
worship  of  the  synagogue  In  his  native  village, 
"  Hear,  O  Israel,  the  Lord  our  God,  the  Lord 
Is  One.  And  thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy 
God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  mind, 
and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  strength. 
This  Is  the  first  and  great  commandment." 
The  second  Is  this,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbour  as  thyself."  Jesus  made  the  sayings 
of  the  Jewish  fathers  the  groundwork  of  his 
teaching.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  the 
Lord's  Prayer  may  be  found  substantially  In 
the    aspirations    of   the   devout  prophets  and 


God  is  One  75 

psalmists  of  Israel.  Jesus,  like  the  other  great 
prophets  of  his  race,  arraigned  the  narrowness 
of  religious  dogma,  and  tested  it  by  the  breadth 
of  religious  need.  He  contradicted  only  to 
enlarge.  He  made  innovations  only  as  the 
pioneer  fells  a  forest  to  plant  a  field.  That 
which  does  not  seem  Jewish  in  the  words  of 
Jesus  was  the  Jew  fulfilled,  enlarged,  and 
sublimated. 

Christianity,  then,  was  Jewish  in  origin  and 
essence.  That  it  ceased  to  be  Jewish  in  ex- 
pression was  the  accident  of  history,  not  the 
purpose  of  its  founders.  Jesus,  Paul,  and 
Simon  Peter,  with  all  that  noble  company  ac- 
counted the  apostles  of  the  religion  of  Jesus, 
when  they  were  most  emphatic  for  the  uni- 
versality of  religion,  spoke  as  Jews.  The  words 
ascribed  to  the  Master  phrased  the  conviction 
of  the  disciples,  "  Salvation  is  of  the  Jews." 
It  was  well  for  Paul  that  he  had  been  a  dweller 
in  Tarsus,  for  he  knew  what  it  was  to  be  a 
Roman  born  and  a  Greek  by  association  ;  but 
in  religion  he  was  so  narrow  a  Jew  that  he 
persecuted  those  who  were  disciples  of  the 
larger  Hebrew  faith.  When  the  struggle  came 
between  the  religion  of  Jesus,  the  Son  of  Man, 
and  the  religion  of  the  temple  of  the  sons  of 
Israel  it  was   Paul's   declaration,   "  After   the 


76  One  World  at  a  Time 

manner  which  they  call  heresy,  worship  I  the 
God  of  my  fathers."  The  test  of  orthodoxy 
is  thus  declared  to  be  spiritual  communion. 
This  is  the  key-note  of  Christianity — that  it 
finds  its  ground  of  being"  in  God.  It  is  Unit- 
arian in  its  origin,  since  it  is  Jewish  and  there- 
fore monotheistic  ;  it  is  a  divine  impulse  from 
the  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  Hebrew, 
which  finds  its  source  in  God's  unity,  its  ex- 
pansion in  man's  brotherhood,  its  inspiration 
in  man's  relation  to  God  the  Father,  and  its 
mission  in  revealing  the  Father  to  His  children 
who  "  ignorantly  worship  "  him.  The  Greek 
Aryan,  with  his  "gods  many  and  lords  many," 
was  to  find  in  the  unity  of  God  the  ultimate 
fact  of  his  philosophy  and  the  justification  of 
his  ethics.  The  conversion  of  the  world  to 
Christ  was  an  effort  to  reduce  the  confusion 
of  the  Aryan  Pantheon  to  unity  of  worship 
in  the  religion  of  Jesus,  the  Semite.  The 
Scriptures  of  the  new  faith  were  Jewish,  every 
line.  The  teachers  of  the  faith  were  at  first 
Jewish,  every  one.  The  philosophy  of  life,  at 
once  simple  and  strong,  was  the  conception 
of  a  Galilean.  Essential  Christianity  is  essen- 
tially Jewish ;  therefore,  essential  Christianity 
is  Unitarian. 

The  history  of  the  Unitarian  idea,  from  the 


God  is  One  11 

Sermon  on  the  Mount  to  the  Nicene  Creed, 
can  be  traced  here  only  in  outHne.  We  must 
throughout  remember  that  the  absorbing  zeal 
of  a  true  Hebrew  gave  it  birth  that  the  uni- 
versalism  of  Paul  the  Hebrew  set  it  free  ;  that 
the  hope  of  the  coming  Messiah  held  it  to- 
gether and  the  Unity  of  God  and  the  Brother- 
hood of  Man  afforded  it  motive  for  worship 
and  communion.  Let  us  pass  in  brief  review 
the  processes  which  confused  its  simplicity, 
and  substituted  at  length,  in  the  fourth  cent- 
ury, a  metaphysical  speculation  for  the  re- 
ligion of  Jesus,  and  thus  introduced  the  great 
Apostasy. 

The  first  break  away  from  Jewish  origins 
which  appears  (in  the  Book  of  Acts)  is  the 
appointment  of  the  seven  deacons  "  to  serve 
tables."  All  the  names  are  Hellenic.  We 
must  take  account  of  the  classes  first  affected 
by  the  new  movement.  There  were  the  Jews 
by  birth  and  religion,  who  were  Palestinian 
as  to  residence  and  Aramaic  in  language ; 
or  Alexandrian  as  to  residence  and  Greek  in 
language.  There  were  those  who  were  Greeks 
by  birth  and  Jews  in  religion, — "proselytes 
of  righteousness."  In  the  third  place  come 
those  who  were  Greeks  by  birth  and  re- 
ligion,— converts  from  paganism  to  the  new 


78  One  World  at  a  Time 

faith.  Here  is  the  material  for  the  contro- 
versy which  appears  in  the  Book  of  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  and  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Galatians  as  a  conflict  between  the  believers 
in  Paul's  gospel  and  the  Jerusalem-party — 
those  who  insisted  upon  the  universality  of 
religion  and  those  who  admitted  that  it  might 
become  universal  but  must  be  Jewish  first. 
The  struggle  was  maintained  until  the  de- 
struction of  the  centre  of  worship  at  Jeru- 
salem made  all  authority  turn  upon  ideas, 
unsupported  by  appeal  to  holy  places  and 
their  associations.  But  the  contention  still 
survived  in  the  Judaic  sects,  not  so  much 
heretical  as  narrow,  "  who  still  sought  to 
particularise  and  contract  Christianity,  as 
Gnosticism  enlarged  it  to  vagueness,"  Several 
well-defined  claims  were  now  put  forth,  all 
Jewish  in  origin.  Of  the  most  important, 
the  Messiahship  of  Jesus,  Baur  well  says  : 


"  Had  not  the  Messianic  idea — the  idea  in  which  Jew- 
ish national  hopes  had  their  profoundest  expression — 
fixed  itself  on  the  person  of  Jesus  and  caused  him  to 
be  regarded  as  the  Messiah  who  had  come  for  the 
redemption  of  his  people,  and  in  whom  the  promise 
of  the  fathers  was  fulfilled,  the  belief  in  him  could 
never  have  had  a  power  of  such  far-reaching  influence 
in    history.      It   was    in    the    Messianic    idea   that   the 


God  is  One  79 

spiritual  contents  of  Christianity  were  clothed  with 
the  concrete  form  in  which  it  could  enter  on  the  path 
of  historical  development.  The  consciousness  of  Jesus 
was  thus  taken  up  by  the  national  consciousness  and 
enabled  to  spread  and  become  the  general  conscious- 
ness of  the  world," 

If  it  be  asked  how  could  such  a  hope,  local 
and  national  to  the  Jew,  be  transferred  to 
Greek  minds,  we  are  reminded  of  several  well- 
established  facts,  (i)  The  great  body  of  Ro- 
mans and  Greeks  converted  to  Judaism  in  the 
century  preceding  our  era  had  given  Judaism 
a  singular  and  significant  place  in  the  Roman 
Empire.  It  was  a  religion  allowed  and  set 
apart,  literally  assigned  the  place  it  claimed ; 
whatever  enthusiasm  stirred  its  heart  would 
make  its  pulsation  felt  throughout  the  Roman 
world.  In  the  first  century  of  our  era  Alex- 
andria, Rome,  and  other  great  metropolitan 
centres  were  as  Jewish  as  New  York  is  to- 
day. (2)  Ethically  disquieted,  the  Roman 
world  looked  with  hope  for  a  deliverance 
answering  to  human  need,  correlative  to  the 
national  hope  of  the  Jew,  to  whom  all  ques- 
tions were  centred  in  religion  ;  the  human- 
ity of  the  Greek,  which  found  expression  in 
philosophy  and  art,  in  the  Jew  blossomed  into 
psalm  and  prophetic  writing.     "  Great  hopes 


8o  One  World  at  a  Time 

are  for  great  souls."  This  was  a  people 
chosen  from  above  for  the  purposes  of  God, 
because  moved  from  within  for  the  uses  of 
religion  according  to  a  genius  which  was  in 
its  inception  Jewish,  but  has  been  found  in 
its  expansion  simply  human.  (3)  To  any 
who  might  inquire  what  had  become  of  the 
"  Messlanlc-hope "  the  answer  was  always 
ready,  that  It  had  been  pushed  forward  to 
the  "  second  advent."  The  chief  inspiration 
of  Jew,  Hellene,  and  Roman  convert  now 
became  an  ardent  hope  for  the  reappearing 
of  Christ  In  the  clouds  of  heaven  to  Introduce 
a  millennial  reign.  Already  the  wholesome 
conceptions,  of  the  Jewish  king  who  should 
rule  In  righteousness,  of  the  chosen  people 
who  should  constitute  Messiah  in  a  corporate 
Israel,  and  of  the  great  Deliverer  of  those 
who  would  live  in  the  Spirit,  had  taken  on 
world-large  proportions  and  in  one  of  the 
earliest  of  the  Christian  documents  find  such 
expression  as  this  : 

"  Then  cometh  the  end,  when  he  shall  deliver  up  the 
kingdom  unto  God,  even  the  Father  ;  when  he  shall 
have  abolished  all  rule  and  all  authority  and  power. 
For  he  must  reign,  till  he  hath  put  all  his  enemies  under 
his  feet  ;  the  last  enemy  that  shall  be  abolished  is 
death.     And  when  all  things  have  been  subjected  unto 


God  is  One  8i 

him,  then  shall  the  Son  also  himself  be  subjected  to 
Him  that  did  put  all  things  under  him,  that  God  may 
be  all  in  all  "  (i  Cor.  xv.  24-28). 

In  many  forms  these  words  of  Paul  are  re- 
peated for  three  hundred  years  ;  they  are  the 
Messianic  hope  of  the  Jew  taking  shape  as 
the  universal  hope  of  the  Church. 

In  view  of  this  second  advent,  the  Parousta, 
martyrdom  became  a  virtue,  marriage  an  in- 
convenience, and  personal  possessions  a  hind- 
rance. But  however  the  Messianic  idea  may 
change,  there  has  been  no  change  in  the  mono- 
theism of  the  religion  of  Jesus.  The  Jew  had 
never  declared  that  the  Messiah  would  be  God. 
Between  Jehovah  and  Messiah  there  was  all 
the  distance  between  the  Ineffable  and  Un- 
approachable and  the  king  of  Israel  whom 
He  ordained  for  righteous  rule  ;  the  Messiah 
was  never  to  be  an  object  of  worship,  or  in 
any  sense  supernatural.  Those  who  fixed 
their  eyes  upon  the  clouds,  looking  for  the 
second  advent,  in  ascribing  a  nature  not  sim- 
ply human  to  Christ  in  no  way  exalted  him 
to  the  place  of  God  ;  the  subordination  of  the 
Son  to  the  Father  survives,  as  crucial  and 
invariable  beneath  all  efforts  to  phrase  his 
nature  and  define  his  being.  However  large 
his    figure    grows ;    however    insufficient    his 


82  One  World  at  a  Time 

earthly  parentage  appears  ;  however  necessary 
to  the  imagination  his  miraculous  birth  seems 
to  be  to  account  for  his  power  and  character ; 
however  the  pendulum  of  faith  swings  from 
the  belief  in  the  reality  of  his  humanity  to  the 
belief  in  that  humanity  as  the  mere  phantom 
and  apparition  in  which  the  Father  appears  to 
suffer,  no  Father  of  the  Church  for  three  hun- 
dred years  lost  sight  of  the  distinction  be- 
tween absolute  Deity  and  its  representation 
in  the  terms  of  human  life  ;  always  the  Son 
is  sicbject  to  the  Father.  The  monotheism 
survives  strongly  in  all  the  deliverances  con- 
cerning the  Being  of  God.  The  Synod  of  An- 
tioch  rejects  and  condemns  the  term  6/aoouo-ios 
(consubstantial)  as  used  by  Paul  of  Samosata 
to  indicate  the  identity  of  substance  between 
the  Father  and  the  Son  ;  and  though,  in  the 
next  century,  the  Council  of  Nicaea  returned 
to  it  as  the  test  of  orthodoxy,  it  left  its  testi- 
mony to  the  subordination  of  Christ  to  God  in 
the  Nicene  Creed  in  the  terms,  "  Very  God 
out  of  very  God." 

If  we  turn  to  the  Shepherd  of  Hernias 
we  find  such  statements  as  this  :  "  First  of  all, 
believe  that  there  is  one  God,  who  created 
and  formed  all  things  out  of  nothing.  He 
comprehends    all    and    is    alone    not    to    be 


God  is  One  83 

comprehended  (limited  by  definition),  who  can- 
not be  defined  in  words,  nor  conceived  by  the 
mind."  This  is  a  favourite  passage  with  Iren- 
seus,  as  we  might  expect,  with  Origen  in  the 
third  century,  and  in  the  fourth  century  with 
Athanasius,  to  whom  has  been  ascribed  a  doc- 
trine of  a  Trinity  of  which  he  never  dreamed. 

This,  then,  is  clear,  through  all  intricacies 
of  doctrine,  that  the  absolute  Being  of  God  re- 
mains untouched  by  the  growing  claims  of 
Christ.  If  the  cause  of  this  be  sought,  it  is  to 
be  found  in  the  unmistakable  Jewish  enthus- 
iasm for  the  Eternal  which  penetrates  the  ex- 
pressions looking  to  subordination  of  the  Son. 

To  Clement  of  Rome,  "  Christ  Is  sent  forth 
from  God  and  the  Apostles  are  from  Christ ; 
both  came  of  the  Will  of  God  in  the  ap- 
pointed order."  So  In  ''the  Teaching  of  the 
Twelve^'  God  Is  "  the  Almighty  Maker,"  and 
Jesus  "his  servant."  Clement's  Epistle  to  the 
Corinthians  bears  rich  testimony  to  the  Script- 
ures of  the  Old  Testament  and  quotes  the 
precepts  of  the  New.  He  proves  the  resur- 
rection, not  by  referring  Deity  to  Christ,  but 
by  the  analogy  of  the  Phoenix,  as  Herodotus 
and  Pliny  tell  the  tale  of  Its  return  from 
death. 

Polycarp,  to    whom   we    owe,  according  to 


84  One  World  at  a  Time 

Harnack,  "  an  instance  singular  in  history  of 
a  chain  of  unbroken  tradition,"  is  saturated 
with  the  New  Testament  spirit  in  his  letter  to 
the  Philippians.  It  would  seem  an  echo  of 
Paul,  when  we  read  Polycarp's  blessing  of  the 
Church  :  "  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  and  he  himself  who  is  an  everlasting 
High  Priest,  the  Son  of  God,  even  Jesus 
Christ,  build  you  up  in  faith  and  truth." 

In  the  Gospels  and  the  Epistles,  the  strong 
monotheistic  tone  of  all  the  utterances  is  to 
be  noted  ;  even  in  the  Apocryphal  documents, 
and  especially  in  the  Fathers  of  the  second 
century,  we  get  the  same  insistence  upon  the 
absolute  Being  of  God.  How  this  was  pene- 
trated by  the  suggestions  which  later  de- 
veloped into  a  vague  tritheism  we  will  notice 
later  on. 

If  we  turn  to  the  Teaching  of  the  Twelve 
a  late-discovered  second-century  document,  or 
even  to  the  catechetical  instruction  in  the 
Alexandrian  churches,  we  have  the  clearest 
proof  that  the  magnifying  of  Jesus  Christ  has 
in  no  way  obscured  the  supreme  object  of 
worship.  I  quote  from  the  instructions  of  the 
Alexandrian  catechumens  :  "  I  believe  in  one 
true  God,  the  Father  Almighty,  and  in  His  only 
Son  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  and 


God  is  One  85 

in  the  Holy  Spirit  who  giveth  life."  At  the 
close  of  the  third  century,  this  doctrine  of 
"subordination"  holds  its  place,  though  much 
overlaid  by  later  thought : 

"  I  pledge  myself  to  Christ  and  I  am  baptised  in  the 
faith  of  the  one  Supreme  Uncreated  God,  in  Jesus 
Christ,  by  whom  the  universe  was  created  and  formed, 
and  from  whom  all  things  proceed.  I  believe  in  the 
Lord  Jesus,  His  only  Son,  the  first  born  of  all  creation, 
begotten  before  the  ages  by  the  good  pleasure  of  the 
Father,  not  created,  by  whom  all  things  in  heaven  and 
earth  were  made,  visible  and  invisible.  In  the  last 
times  he  descended  from  heaven  and  took  upon  him 
our  flesh.  He  was  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  He  lived 
holily  and  blamelessly  in  the  world,  walking  in  all  the 
commandments  of  his  God  and  Father" 

The  earliest  Christian  Inscription  of  any 
length  which  we  have  is  the  epitaph  upon  the 
tomb  of  Abercius,  Bishop  of  HIeropolis,  dis- 
covered by  Mr.  Ramsay  in  1882.  It  Is  signi- 
ficant as  a  survival  of  the  faith  of  the  second 
century  near  Its  close  : 

"  I,  the  citizen  of  a  chosen  city,  made  this  in  my  life- 
time, that  in  due  season  I  may  have  a  resting  place  for 
my  body.  Abercius  by  name,  I  am  a  disciple  of  the 
pure  shepherd  who  feeds  his  herds  of  sheep  on  the  mount- 
ains and  plains,  who  has  great  eyes  that  look  on  all 
sides  ;  for  he  taught  me  faithful  writings,  who  sent  me 
to  royal  Rome  to  see  it,  and  to  see  a  golden-robed,  gold- 
en-sandalled Queen,  and  there,  too,  I  saw  a  ])eople  that 


86  One  World  at  a  Time 

has  the  bright  seal.  And  I  saw  the  plain  of  Syria  and 
all  the  cities,  even  Nisbis,  crossing  the  Euphrates,  and 
everywhere  I  had  companions.  With  Paul  I  followed 
and  Faith  led  me  everywhere,  and  everywhere  served  up 
to  me  for  food  a  fish  [the  cryptogram  for  Christ]  from 
the  fountain,  very  large,  pure,  which  a  pure  Virgin 
grasped,  and  she  [Faith]  gave  this  to  friends  to  eat  con- 
tinually, having  excellent  wine,  giving  the  mixed  wine 
with  bread.  These  words,  standing  by,  I,  Abercius,  bade 
to  be  thus  inscribed.  I  was  truly  living  my  seventy- 
second  year.  Let  every  fellow-Christian  who  reads  this 
pray  for  me." 

This  is  not  simply  curious,  coming  so  late 
in  the  nineteenth  century  from  the  close  of  the 
second  century,  but  it  is  instructive  also  as 
showing  how  simple  were  the  phrases  in  which 
Christ,  the  Church,  baptism,  and  the  Lord's 
Supper  were  conveyed.  It  is  the  undogmatic 
age  to  which  belong  the  last  of  the  Apostolic 
Fathers  and  the  Confessors.  It  is  the  century 
of  Ignatius,  Justin  Martyr,  and  Irenseus.  It  is 
not  yet  conscious  that  the  Good  Shepherd  has 
"  two  natures  "  or  is  God,  or  that  the  simple 
Christian  meal  is  a  mystic  sacrifice.  The  dox- 
ology  of  Flavian  of  Antioch  had  not  yet  been 
heard  in  any  church.  Men  did  not  yet  "  shout 
forth  Glory  be  to  the  Father  and  to  the  Son 
and  to  the  Holy  Spirit."  This,  according  to 
Philostorgius,  was  new  to  the  Church,  which 


God  is  One  87 

before  that  time  had  used  the  form,  "  Glory 
be  to  the  Father  through  the  Son  in  the  Holy 
Spirit.  Though  some  also  said,  '  Glory  be  to 
the  Father  in  the  Son  and  in  the  Holy  Spirit.' " 
The  Church  was  still  dependent  upon  "the 
heart,  which  believeth  unto  righteousness," 
rather  than  upon  nice  distinctions  of  the  spec- 
ulative intellect. 

But  already,  in  the  Christian  "gnosis"  of  the 
second  century,  a  process  was  at  work  that  was 
to  prepare  a  soil  congenial  to  the  tangled  crop 
of  dogma  which  would  cover  the  third  century 
with  its  rank  growth.  The  Gnostics,  whom 
the  Church  repudiated,  had  infected  the  Church 
itself  with  their  methods,  though  in  the  school 
of  Philo,  and  in  the  Rabbinical  science  of  num- 
bers, a  strong  tendency  had  prepared  for  the 
change.  We  find  the  Old  Testament  searched 
for  allusions  to  the  growing  Christology  of  the 
Church.  Wherever  "  Wisdom  "  is  spoken  of, 
it  is  the  Logos  doctrine  of  the  New  Era  ap- 
pearing in  the  ancient  writings.  Wherever  it 
is  possible  to  find  a  reference  to  "wood,"  it 
prefigures  the  cross ;  the  "  stone "  is  Christ 
himself ;  the  pastoral  psalms  are  full  of  the 
Good  Shepherd,  and  the  sorrows  of  Messiah 
are  located  in  Gethsemane  and  on  Calvary. 
The  Eternal  Reason,  which  the  Hebrew  makes 


88  One  World  at  a  Time 

to  dwell  always  where  the  Eternal  One  is, 
teaches  the  pre-existence  of  Christ.  To  our 
age  many  of  these  constructions  are  not  only 
false  in  exegesis  and  far-fetched  in  meaning, 
they  are  also  known  to  be  false  readings  of  the 
Septuagint  Scripture  by  Greeks  ignorant  of 
Hebrew. 

The  text  of  an  ancient  writing  begins  to 
claim  the  first  place  in  the  attention  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church  ;  and  those  who  depend 
upon  the  Old  Testament,  repudiating  the 
pagan  writings,  match  in  ingenuity  of  inter- 
pretation those  who  quote  Homer,  Plato,  and 
Hesiod,  as  did  Justin,  and,  later,  Origen.  The 
second  century  is  preparing  its  doctrine  of  In- 
spiration, which  will  grow  narrower  and  nar- 
rower, until  the  fourth  century  shall  declare 
the  sublimest  utterances  of  antiquity  "  a  doc- 
trine of  devils"  unless  they  arose  in  the  He- 
brew mind. 

The  strong  anti-Jewish  temper  of  the  Church 
in  the  second  and  third  centuries,  which  re- 
pudiated the  Nazarenes,  the  Ebionites,  and  all 
the  Judaic  survivals  of  the  simple  religion  of 
Jesus,  was  guilty  of  that  strange  inconsistency 
which  the  Church  still  perpetuates,  of  despis- 
ing the  very  sources  of  the  Scriptures  upon 
which    it   hangs    in    helpless    servility.       The 


God  is  One  89 

Hebrew  genius  for  religion  produced  for  these 
early  centuries  the  Word  of  God,  and  enriched 
the  nations  to  whom,  on  their  own  theory  of 
Revelation,  God  had  never  spoken. 

The  essential  and  absolute  being  of  God 
became  more  and  more  difficult  of  apprehen- 
sion. An  instrument  of  creation  was  de- 
manded by  the  popular  imagination.  Already 
in  Egypt  the  material  for  this  idea  was  ready 
to  hand  ;  the  Greek  Cosmogony  supplied  its 
share  ;  and  the  Demiurge  of  the  Gnostics  and 
the  LoQfos  of  the  Orthodox  contended  for  the 
mastery  ;  often  there  was  but  little  to  choose 
between  the  one  and  the  other  theory  as  it 
was  worked  out  by  its  partisans.  This  creat- 
ive agent  is  not  one  and  the  same  at  all 
times ;  sometimes  it  is  the  Son,  sometimes 
Wisdom,  sometimes  the  Holy  Spirit.  So  late 
as  the  time  of  Gregory  Nazianzen,  a.d.  390, 
we  find  diversity  of  view  concerning  the  Holy 
Spirit.  He  says  :  **  Some  of  our  theologians 
regard  the  Spirit  as  a  mode  of  the  Divine 
operation  ;  others  as  a  creation  of  God  ;  others 
as  God  Himself  ;  others  again  say  they  know 
not  which  of  these  opinions  to  accept,  from 
their  reverence  for  Holy  Scripture,  which  says 
nothing  about  it." 

These  later  speculations  did  not  belong  to 


90  One  World  at  a  Time 

the  Apostolic  Fathers.  The  ApostoHc  Age 
set  itself  just  two  problems  and  no  more  :  it 
was  intent  upon  purifying  society  ;  and  it  was 
intent,  as  a  means  to  this  end,  on  proclaiming 
the  Supreme  God  as  the  object  of  worship, 
revealed  in  his  servant  Jesus  so  clearly  as  to 
make  him  seem  the  Son  of  God,  "  only  begot- 
ten." Vice  and  polytheism  found  their  an- 
tagonists in  a  faith  which  proclaimed,  "  Hear, 
O  Israel,  the  Lord  the  Eternal,  the  Eternal  is 
One,"  and  then  summoned  to  that  purity  of 
heart  which  was  to  be  the  preparation  to  see 
God.  This,  and  no  more,  was  the  essential 
message  of  Jesus  Christ  to  the  age  called 
apostolic,  as  they  understood  it  ;  the  adjust- 
ment of  human  relations  upon  the  terms  of  a 
Love  which  in  God  is  Fatherhood,  and  in 
man  is  brotherhood.  It  was  not  an  age  of 
dogma.  They  were  to  "do  God's  will  "  as  a 
means  of  knowing  any  teaching  to  be  author- 
itative. There  was  no  consensus  of  opinion. 
There  was  the  freest  and  most  inexact  recital 
of  the  incidents  of  the  life  of  their  Master. 
They  were  not  yet  so  far  separated  from  their 
Jewish  beginnings  as  to  excite  recognition  as 
a  new  religious  cult.  The  Christian  guild,  as 
a  Jewish  organisation,  was  tolerated  long  after 
Greek  and  Roman  guilds  had  been  prohibited. 


God  is  One  91 

When  we  pass  to  the  Martyr  Age  we  find 
that  we  have  not  yet  reached  the  age  of 
dogma.  Still  it  is  believed  that  the  sanctity 
of  high  courage  and  consistent  purpose  takes 
precedence  of  the  "  form  of  sound  words." 
The  martyrs  did  not  die  to  vindicate  a  body 
of  doctrine ;  they  were  sacrificed  sometimes  at 
the  instigation  of  personal  hatred  and  private 
spite,  sometimes  through  suspicion  of  their 
secret  assemblies,  which  in  the  case  of  the 
Roman  and  Greek  guilds  had  been  forbidden 
by  law.  Sometimes  the  enthusiasm  for  death 
made  them  rush  upon  martyrdom,  goading  to 
violence  a  orovernment  unwillinor  to  sacrifice 
its  subjects.  Sometimes  the  necessity  of  pro- 
viding" actors  in  the  orladiatorial  shows  and 
cruel  sports  of  the  amphitheatre  made  a  levy 
upon  the  **  suspects  "  a  convenient  resource. 
Sometimes  the  government  referred  to  these 
proscribed  ones  the  pestilence  or  famine  for 
which  a  superstitious  age  could  not  account 
by  natural  causes.  Some  are  surprised  that 
the  best  emperors  were  the  keenest  persecut- 
ors ;  but  the  Roman  idea  of  the  State  made 
it  inseparable  from  religion  ;  disloyalty  was 
atheism,  and  the  feeling  as  to  any  independ- 
ent organisation  within  the  State  is  reflected 
in  the  saying  of  Marcus  Aurelius :  "  What  is 


92  One  World  at  a  Time 

not  useful  to  the  swarm  is  not  useful  to  the 
bee ! " 

From  whatever  motive,  when  Carthage, 
Smyrna,  Antioch,  Rome,  or  the  churches  of 
Gaul  furnished  "  confessors  "  to  death,  none 
of  them  died  who  were  willing  to  curse  Christ 
or  sacrifice  to  the  image  of  the  Emperor. 
Such  a  sacrifice  was  never  interpreted  as  a 
disbelief  in  the  ultimate  Deity  to  whom  Christ- 
ian and  Roman  referred  religion  in  its  last 
analysis.  There  was  no  examination  in  the 
terms  of  theology  which  a  later  age  vainly 
sought  to  identify  with  Christian  faith.  The 
martyrs  of  the  second  century  would  have 
died  as  readily  upon  the  demand  to  believe  in 
a  Trinity  as  they  would  upon  the  demand  to 
believe  in  the  Pantheon  of  Roman  divinities. 
The  Emperor  was  to  them  a  man  to  be  argued 
with,  as  the  Apologies  of  Justin,  Tatian,  and 
Origen  show ;  worship  of  him  was  forbidden 
by  their  belief  in  the  Eternal  One  and  their 
adoration  of  the  purity  of  His  Son,  Jesus 
Christ.  This  age  of  the  martyrs  speaks  in 
the  words  of  Ignatius  of  Antioch,  115  a.d.  ; 
he  beseeches  his  friends  at  Rome  not  to  in- 
terfere, by  petitions  for  his  release  : 

"  I  am  fearful  of  your  love  lest  it  injure  me.  For  you 
it  is  easy  to  do  whatsoever  you  please,  but  for  me  it  is 


God  is  One  93 

difficult  that  I  should  attain  God  if  indeed  you  do  not 
spare  me.  For  I  shall  not  have  such  an  opportunity  to 
attain  God  ;  nor  will  ye,  if  ye  now  be  silent,  ever  have 
the  benefit  of  a  better  work.  If  ye  keep  silence  about 
me  I  shall  become  God's  speech,  but  if  ye  love  my  body 
I  shall  be  again  an  echo  of  myself.  It  is  well  that  I  set 
from  the  world  to  God,  that  I  may  rise  with  Him.  I  am 
God's  wheat,  and  by  the  teeth  of  the  beasts  am  I  ground, 
that  I  may  become  God's  pure  bread." 

The  passage  from  the  fathers  of  the  faith  to 
the  Fathers  of  theology  is  made  by  Justin  Mar- 
tyr (a.d.  163),  naturally,  for  he  was  a  student 
of  philosophy,  and  a  Greek,  though  born  in 
Samaria.  Henceforward  religion  will  express 
itself  in  the  terms  of  philosophy,  borrowed 
from  Greek,  Roman,  and  Oriental  sources. 
Even  its  martyrs  will  make  their  Confession 
in  philosophical  terms ;  and  emperors  will 
eventually  cast  in  their  lot  with  one  party  or 
the  other  in  the  debate  of  the  schools.  The 
strenuous  faith  of  early  Christianity  will  soon 
be  overcome  by  the  strident  declamation  of 
controversy. 

The  very  protests  of  the  so-called  heretics 
are  as  instructive  as  the  trend  of  authority 
against  which  the  protests  were  made.  Marcion 
(a.d.  130-180)  leads  a  revolt  from  philosophy 
in  favor  of  a  religion  of  the  New  Testament. 
He  is  so  persuaded  of  the  benignity  of  the 


94  One  World  at  a  Time 

Father  as  Jesus  taught  of  Him,  that  he  cannot 
identify  Him  with  the  Jehovah  of  the  Old 
Testament.  Jehovah  may  be  a  God  for  the 
Jews,  but  he  is  not  the  Father  of  Jesus.  The 
Jew's  God  was,  perhaps,  a  just  God,  but  the 
God  of  Jesus  was  love.  The  passage  to  dual- 
ism is  easy.  The  supposition  of  subordinate 
gods  to  account  for  evil  is  natural.  The 
charge  of  Gnosticism  was  early  made  against 
Marcion  ;  Marcion  and  Basilides  were  certainly 
the  best  of  the  Gnostics.  The  cardinal  points 
of  Marcion's  system  are  these  :  (i)  The  Su- 
preme God,  who  is  absolutely  good,  cannot 
possibly  enter  into  any  union  with  matter  ;  the 
material  world  cannot,  therefore,  have  been 
created  by  God,  but  it  is  the  work  of  an  infe- 
rior being,  who  is  ever  in  conflict  with  matter 
but  cannot  overcome  it.  (2)  The  Supreme 
God  has  once,  and  once  only,  revealed  Himself, 
in  Christ ;  Christ  and  Christ's  religion  are 
therefore,  for  man,  the  only  possible  manifest- 
ation of  the  absolute  good.  (3)  Absolute 
goodness  consists  in  love  and  love  only.  Just- 
ice, or  the  retributive  principle,  is  in  its  nature 
opposed  to  love,  and  therefore  cannot  be 
affirmed  of  the  Supreme  God. 

Marcion's  disciple,  Hermogenes,  attempted  a 
solution    no    more   logical    but    more  poetic : 


God  is  One  95 

the  Eternal  One  attracts  out  of  chaos  order 
and  Hfe  as  by  a  creative  attraction  analogous 
to  that  of  beauty  upon  the  mind  of  man,  or,  as 
Aristotle  says,  "  He  influences  it  as  the  be- 
loved object  influences  the  lover."  Creation 
is  progressive  from  eternity  ;  matter  eternally 
opposes,  and  is  eternally  attracted  into,  form 
and  life  ;  moral  evil  occurs  when  this  attrac- 
tion is  successfully  resisted.  Irenaeus  and 
TertulHan  opposed  to  this  the  orthodox  no- 
tion that  God  created  all  things  out  of  no- 
thing ;  this  may  still  be  good  doctrine  for  the 
unscientific,  but  it  has  been  repudiated  by  all 
students  of  cosmogony. 

The  essential  heresy  of  Marcion,  Basilides, 
Valentinus,  and  all  the  Gnostics  lay  in  their 
denial  of  the  Unity  of  God.  They  were  not 
arrayed  against  the  claims  of  the  Trinity,  for 
such  a  doctrine  had  not  been  even  remotely 
foreshadowed  in  their  days.  The  eternity  of 
matter,  the  creation  of  the  world  by  Inferior 
powers,  and  the  two-God  theory  horrified 
Irenseus  as  later  they  did  Orlgen  and  Tertul- 
Han ;  the  letter  of  Irenseus  to  his  old  fellow- 
pupil  Florlnus,  who  had  embraced  the  teachings 
of  Valentinus,  Is  an  effort  to  reclaim  him  to  a 
belief  In  the  Unity  of  God.  The  opponents 
of  Gnosticism  felt  a  greater  solicitude  because 


g6  One  World  at  a  Time 

they  foresaw  that,  despite  the  noble  lives  of  its 
first  exponents,  there  would  logically  attend 
upon  Gnosticism  the  same  degradation  which 
had  debased  both  Stoicism  and  Epicureanism. 
Their  opposition  was  justified  by  the  result  as 
shown  in  the  Cainites  and  other  sects,  who 
claimed  that  the  best  way  to  resist  the  assaults 
of  evil  was  to  yield  to  its  immoralities  as  of 
no  account  to  the  spirit  and  unworthy  of  at- 
tention, being  only  in  the  flesh.  The  gross- 
ness  of  life  which  resulted  proved  that  with 
the  common  people  the  ethical  tendency  of 
Gnosticism  could  be  only  evil.  It  is  therefore 
an  error  to  suppose  that  the  enthusiasm  of 
Irenaeus,  Origen,  Hippolytus,  and  Tertullian 
was  because  they  were  lacking  in  regard  to 
God's  Unity.  It  was  the  very  reverse  of  this 
which  gave  power  to  their  assault  upon 
Gnosticism. 

Still  another  class  of  heretical  opposition  is 
represented  in  that  vindication  of  the  liberty 
of  prophesying  which  takes  the  name  of  Mon- 
tanism.  Montanus,  Prisca,  and  Maximilla,  the 
founders  of  a  Society  of  Friends  during  the 
reign  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  were  perhaps  in- 
cited to  a  philosophy  of  salvation,  a  study  of 
the  life  of  the  soul,  by  the  example  of  the 
Stoic  Emperor,  or  goaded  to  it  by  the  growing 


God  is  One  97 

licentiousness  of  a  court  over  which  a  philo- 
sopher reigned,  but  which  a  profligate  woman 
and  her  son  Commodus  actually  ruled.  Le- 
galism was  strangely  united  to  liberty  in  the 
teaching  and  practice  of  Montanism.  Fast- 
ing and  asceticism  commended  the  heresy  to 
the  fiery  soul  of  Tertullian.  He  declaimed 
against  its  frenzied  prophesying  until  he  was 
himself  in  an  ecstasy  of  passion  in  which  he 
passed  to  adhesion  to  the  sect  (a.d.  202)  which 
fulminated  from  Carthage  its  anathemas 
against  the  license  of  Rome.  The  heretic  was 
more  orthodox  than  the  Church  in  behaviour, 
and,  with  a  strange  mingling  of  doctrinal  ex- 
actness and  personal  self-denial,  held  aloof  from 
the  communion  of  Christianity  as  breeding 
a  schism,  only  to  form  a  sect  still  narrower, 
which,  living  through  the  third  century  as  "  Ter- 
tullianists,"  made  prophecy  ridiculous  and 
asceticism  contemptible. 

The  church  in  the  West,  under  Tertullian's 
lead,  was  governed  by  a  spirit  entirely  foreign 
to  the  liberality  of  Jesus  and  Paul  in  life  and 
teaching.  It  did  not  maintain  in  any  just  de- 
gree the  feeling  of  Justin,  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria, and  Origen  that  God  had  spoken  by 
other  lips  than  those  of  Jews.  "  There  is  one 
River  of  Truth,  but  many  streams  fall  into  it  on 


98  One  World  at  a  Time 

this  side  and  that,"  said  Clement.  Truth  is 
one,  but  its  aspects  are  various :  "  A  drachma 
is  one  and  the  same  ;  but  if  you  give  it  to 
a  ship-captain,  it  is  called  a  '  fare,'  if  to  a  re- 
venue officer  it  is  called  a  '  tax,'  if  to  a  landlord 
'  rent,'  if  to  a  schoolmaster  a  '  fee,'  if  to  a  shop- 
keeper a  'price.'  Still  in  each  case  it  is  the 
drachma."  Clement's  generous  attitude  was 
like  that  of  Irenseus,  whose  mission  from  the 
churches  of  Gaul  to  Victor  of  Rome  pleaded 
for  moderation  toward  Montanism,  since  it 
held  strongly  the  doctrine  of  the  Word,  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  and  the  liberty  of  the  soul  to  know 
the  will  of  God.  Clement  declared  that  "  the 
cure  for  error  is  more  knowledge."  Such  was 
not  the  attitude  of  Tertullian  and  Tatian  ; 
these  masters  of  abuse  were  most  orthodox  in 
declaring  all  philosophy  "  a  doctrine  of  devils." 
Their  motto  was,  "  Only  believe,"  a  motto  en- 
forced by  a  picturesque  blasphemy  against 
human  error,  which  left  nothing  to  be  supplied 
by  a  later  age  In  Its  trials  for  heresy. 

Tertullian,  Indeed,  speculated  upon  the 
orlorlnal  riofhteousness  of  man,  fulfilled  In  the 
Ideal  humanity  of  Christ ;  but  his  fine  phrase, 
"  Man  first,  then  God,"  was  so  twisted  by  his 
bias  against  his  opponents  that  he  never  rises 
to   an    "enthusiasm  of    humanity."     He  was 


God  is  One  99 

tenacious  of  a  Trinity,  and  for  this  reason  he 
crept  back  into  the  Roman  calendar  of  saints 
with  all  his  sins  of  unholy  speech  and  vicious 
temper  full  upon  him  ;  but  his  Trinity  was 
neither  logical  according  to  later  standards, 
nor  scriptural  according  to  earlier  standards. 
He  wrote  and  spoke  with  unremitting  vehe- 
mence. His  "testimony  of  the  soul"  makes 
the  claim  for  Christianity  that  it  is  grounded 
in  the  nature  of  man  and  meets  his  deepest 
needs.  But  he  is  more  interested  in  thing's 
against  which  his  own  soul  may  testify, — 
"against  the  Greeks,"  "against  the  Jews," 
"against  Hermogenes,"  who  claimed  that  matter 
was  eternal,  "  against  the  Gnostic  Valentinus," 
"  against  all  heretics,"  denying  them  any  claim 
to  tolerance,  "against  Marcion,"  "against 
Praxeas,"  who  seemed  to  imply  that  God  suf- 
fered in  the  flesh  of  Christ  and  whom  he 
taunted  with  "  crucifying  the  Father."  There 
was  much,  besides,  on  which  Tertullian  had  an 
opinion  :  he  wrote  on  baptism,  on  the  flesh  of 
Christ,  on  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  on 
penance,  prayer,  and  patience.  He  wrote  an 
address  to  the  martyrs ;  he  unreservedly  con- 
demned the  shows  of  the  theatre  ;  he  fixed  the 
place  of  idolatry  in  the  calendar  of  hate.  He 
was  wise  about  the  dress  of  women.     He  gave 


loo  One  World  at  a  Time 

final  judgment  as  to  veils  or  no  veils  for  un- 
married women.  He  opposed  second  marriage, 
and  rather  deprecated  any  marriage  at  all. 
His  asceticism  gave  weight  to  fasting  ;  he  ar- 
gued the  right  and  wrong  of  military  service  ; 
he  defended  a  Christian  soldier  who  refused  to 
wear  a  wreath  in  one  of  the  festivals  of  Severus  ; 
he  discussed  the  question  whether  in  perse- 
cution one  might  avoid  his  doom  by  flight. 
Thus  did  he  know  and  say  much  about  many 
things  ;  for  most  that  he  said  the  Church  cares 
but  little  now,  but  it  turns  to  his  doctrine  of 
the  Nature  of  God  and  declares  him  a  Father  of 
the  Faith  on  the  only  subject  upon  which  he 
could  knozu  absolutely  nothing.  He  was  a  man 
of  credulity  and  yet  of  spiritual  insight ;  he 
could  say,  "  We  believe,  because  it  is  impos- 
sible "  ;  but  he  could  also  say  "  The  soul  divines 
what  is  divine."  Such  a  man,  with  his  barbar- 
ous African  Latin  and  his  Latinised  Greek,  is 
vehement  for  the  Trinity,  but  it  is  a  trinity  of 
his  own  making  ;  it  is  neither  that  of  Sabellius, 
revived  in  the  nineteenth  century  by  Bushnell 
and  borrowed  by  his  later  imitators,  nor  that 
of  Hegel,  who  is  now  the  consolation  of  the 
"  Broad  Church."  Even  to  Tertullian  the 
subordination  of  Christ  leaves  God  supreme : 
"  Christ  is  God's  ray,  as  the  rays  shine  forth 


God  is  One  lor 

from  the  sun  in  the  heaven  ;  as  I  call  the  ray 
sun  but  not  the  sun  ray  ;  so  I  call  the  Son  God, 
but  not  God  the  Son."  He  speaks  the  lan- 
guage of  simple  religion  when  he  appeals  to 
the  soul  itself  as  the  witness  to  Christian  faith  : 
"  I  summon  thee,  not  such  as  when,  formed  in 
the  schools,  exercised  in  libraries,  nourished  in 
the  Academies  and  Porches  of  Athens,  thou 
utterest  crude  wisdom.  I  address  thee  as 
simple  and  rude,  unpolished  and  unlearned, 
such  as  they  have  thee,  who  have  only  thee  ; 
the  very  and  entire  thing  that  thou  art  in  the 
road  and  in  the  weaver's  factory." 

The  student  of  the  second  and  third  centu- 
ries, following  the  lead  of  most  modern  writers, 
will  come  upon  a  group  of  names  classed  in  a 
loose  way  as  "  the  first  Unitarians."  We  have 
already  claimed  as  the  first  Unitarians  the  Jews, 
to  whom  Jesus,  himself  a  Jew,  spoke  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  ;  the  first  Unitarian  re- 
cords are  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament, 
to  the  reading-  of  which  the  chief  Church 
Fathers  and  champions  of  Christian  doctrine 
declare  their  conversion  from  paganism  was 
due.  Such  is  the  testimony  of  Justin  Martyr, 
Origen,  and  Athenagoras. 

By  "the  first  Unitarians,"  however,  most 
Trinitarian  writers  mean  quite  another  matter. 


I02  One  World  at  a  Time 

They  have  forgotten  the  Jewish  origins  of 
Christianity.  They  have  lost  sight  of  the 
facts  that  its  earliest  converts  from  paganism 
came  through  Jewish  channels,  and  that  from 
the  Jew  Philo  and  his  compatriots  in  Alexan- 
dria Neo-Judaism,  Neo-Platonism  and  Christ- 
ianity have  all  drawn  their  stock  theories  for 
the  Lopfos-doctrine,  without  which  it  is  doubt- 
ful  if  the  Christian  Church  would  have  lapsed 
into  the  Trinitarian  belief,  or  returned  to  ex- 
press its  theology  in  terms  of  a  pagan  myth- 
ology and  its  faith  in  the  symbols  of  the 
same  mythology,  or  to  be  glad  with  a  sacred 
joy  as  it  celebrates  the  old  pagan  festivals 
put  to  new  and  strange  uses. 

With  serene  oblivion  of  such  facts,  certain 
names  are  pilloried  as  Unitarians  and  con- 
demned. They  are  the  group  who,  without 
perfect  logic,  but  with  a  certain  instinct  for 
the  facts  of  early  Christianity,  sought  to  re- 
vive the  old  doctrine  of  the  Unity  of  God, 
unconfused  by  the  newer  doctrine  of  the 
Looros  in  its  manifold  varieties  of  statement. 
They  are  defenders  of  the  primitive  faith,  not 
seceders  from  the  orthodox  teaching.  Who 
are  these  men  ?  Many  of  them  are  known 
to  us  only  by  name.  Some  who  early  saw 
the  inconsistency  between  the  history  of  Jesus 


God  is  One  103 

in  the  fourth  Gospel  and  that  given  in  the 
Synoptics,  the  contradiction  between  the  intro- 
duction to  John's  Gospel  and  the  birth  stories 
of  the  Synoptics  Matthew  and  Luke,  were 
stigmatised  as  Alogians,  "  Deniers  of  the 
Word."  Others  made  a  feeble  attempt  at 
New  Testament  criticism  and  held  that  we 
have  a  record  of  little  more  than  a  single  year 
of  the  ministry  of  Jesus ;  still  others,  with 
quite  excusable  rationalism,  said  of  the  Apoc- 
alypse, "Of  what  use  is  it  all?"  In  this 
group  must  be  placed  Theodotus  of  Rome 
and  that  other  Theodotus  who  came  to  Rome 
from  Bysance ;  their  disciples  we  know  as 
Asclepiades,  Hermophiles,  and  Apollonides. 

But  attention  is  chiefly  riveted  by  the  bril- 
liant career  and  acute  intellectual  gymnastic 
of  Zenobia's  officer,  Paul  of  Samosata,  Bishop 
of  Antioch,  a.d.  260-270.  His  doctrine  was 
much  hurt  by  his  vanity  ;  yet  the  record  of  this 
must  be  not  too  credulously  received.  For 
the  most  part  he  and  all  others  whom  the 
councils  of  the  fourth  century  condemned 
are  known  to  us,  like  Celsus,  that  early  scien- 
tific and  speculative  genius,  only  from  the 
statements  of  those  who  have  left  us  the 
condemnation  of  their  heresies.  They  all 
knew  "  the  gentle  art  of   making    enemies "  ; 


I04  One  World  at  a  Time 

and  the  enemies  wrote  their  histories.  Paul 
of  Samosata  may  well  stand  for  all  the  rest. 
His  views  are  thus  summed  up  by  Pres- 
sense,  a  Trinitarian  writer  : 

"  The  Bishop  of  Antioch  carried  out  the  principles 
of  Theodotus  and  Artemon  (monarchianism)  to  their 
extreme  consequences.  He  lowered  the  dignity  of 
Christ  so  far  as  to  liken  him  to  a  mere  man.  Denying 
his  pre-existence,  he  admitted  no  distinction  of  persons 
in  the  Godhead.  The  Logos  was  for  him  simply  the 
consciousness  which  God  has  of  Himself,  not  a  separate 
Person  but  the  simple  consciousness  of  His  own  person- 
ality. In  this  sense  man  is  the  image  of  God,  but  he 
can  never  attain  to  essence  with  the  Divine  Being,  not 
even  by  Jesus  Christ.  There  was  a  positive  action  of 
the  Word  upon  the  man  Jesus.  The  Spirit  of  God 
had  descended  upon  him,  but  this  action  was  merely 
an  influence  and  did  not  imply  unity  of  essence.  Jesus 
was  indeed  born  of  a  virgin,  but  he  was  none  the  less 
in  his  nature  a  man  like  other  men,  with  this  difference, 
that  he  realised  holiness  and  thus  merited  the  grace  of 
God  in  extraordinary  measure.  The  Divine  Logos  ani- 
mated him  by  inspiration,  but  was  not  incarnate  in  him. 
'  Wisdom,'  said  Paul  of  Samosata,  '  did  not  enter  into 
substantial  union  with  human  nature.'  Thus  the  dif- 
ference between  Jesus  Christ  and  other  men  is  relative 
only.  Wisdom  simply  dwelt  in  him  in  an  exceptional 
manner,  and  it  was  by  the  measure  of  this  Divine 
communication  alone  that  he  was  raised  above  our- 
selves. How,  indeed,  can  it  be  maintained  that  Jesus 
is  the  Son  of  God  ?  Is  not  that  name  already  given 
to   the    Eternal  Wisdom  ?     It  would  follow  that   there 


God  is  One  105 

must  be  two  Sons  of  God,  in  the  absolute  sense,  which 
is  impossible.  Jesus  was  not,  therefore,  the  Son  of 
God  when  he  was  born  of  the  virgin,  but  acquired  that 
high  dignity  by  virtue  of  his  holiness.  The  Word 
was  greater  than  Jesus,  but  Jesus  was  exalted  by  Wis- 
dom. '  There  was  no  other  mode  of  union  between 
various  natures  and  various  persons  except  that  which 
proceeds  from  the  will,  remaining  pure  from  sin.  Christ 
enjoyed  union  with  God,  and  this  oneness  of  the  will 
in  love  is  far  higher  than  mere  unity  of  nature.  Jesus 
is  the  ideal  man  who  flashes  before  our  eyes  the  purest 
rays  of  Divine  wisdom.'  " 

With  this  utterance  of  the  third  century 
compare  the  words  of  James  Martineau,  pre- 
eminently the  prophet  of  the  Unitarian  faith  of 
to-day  : 

"  When  it  is  said,  of  this  personal  appearance  of  divine 
qualities  of  mind  on  the  theatre  and  under  the  con- 
ditions of  human  life,  that  the  'Word  '  itself  was  '  made 
flesh  and  dwelt  among  us,'  the  phrase  simply  affirms  that 
these  qualities  are  not  mere  earth-born  and  animal  phe- 
nomena, but  are  really  the  living  word  of  a  heavenly 
sphere,  and  speak  of  God.  This  is  no  more  '  a  figure 
of  speech  '  than  the  plainest  sentence  we  can  frame  re- 
specting things  transcendent.  I  know  not  whether 
others  can  draw  a  sharp  line  of  separation  between  the 
human  spirit  and  the  divine,  and  can  clearly  say  where 
their  own  soul  ends  and  God's  communion  begins. 
But  for  myself,  with  closest  thought,  I  confess  my  dark- 
ness ;  and  can  only  say  that  somehow  He  stirs  among 
our  higher  affections  and  mingles  with  the  action  of  our 


io6  One  World  at  a  Time 

proper  nature.  If  in  Christ  this  divine  margin  was  not 
simply  broader  than  elsewhere,  but  spread  until  it  cov- 
ered the  whole  soul,  and  brought  the  human  into  moral 
coalescence  with  the  divine,  then  was  God  not  merely 
represented  by  a  foreign  and  resembling  being,  but  per- 
sonally there,  giving  expression  to  His  spiritual  nature,  as 
in  the  visible  universe  to  His  causal  power." 

This  comparison  of  utterances  sixteen  hundred 
years  apart  gives  to  the  Unitarianism  of  Paul 
of  Samosata  no  mean  distinction. 

We  find  the  same  insistence  upon  moral 
union  with  God  in  Artemon  and  in  Beryllus, 
Bishop  of  Bostra.  We  are  inclined  to  suspect 
there  was  good  foundation  for  the  statement 
of  Artemon  that  this  view  was  the  faith  of  all 
the  bishops  of  Rome  to  the  time  of  Victor,  the 
thirteenth  in  order,  whose  successor,  Zephyri- 
nus,  formulated  the  Catholic  theory,  thereby 
corrupting  the  simplicity  of  faith.  Zephyrinus 
was  himself  no  more  orthodox,  but  inclined  to 
the  opposite  extreme  of  Patripassianism.  This 
claim  of  Artemon  has  much  to  support  it  in  the 
writers  of  the  second  century,  writers  who  lie 
under  no  suspicion  of  heresy. 

A  curious  testimony  to  this  early  faith  as 
Unitarian  is  to  be  found  in  Tertullian,  who 
admits  that  his  view  is  not  easily  or  generally 
apprehended  by  the  believers.  His  admission 
is  singularly  convincing.      He  says  : 


God  is  One  107 

"  The  simple  (I  will  not  call  them  unwise  and  unlearned) 
who  always  constitute  the  majority  of  believers,  are 
startled  at  the  oiKOvo/Aia  (or  dispensation  of  the  three 
in  one)  on  the  ground  that  their  very  rule  of  faith  with- 
draws them  from  the  world's  plurality  of  gods  to  the  one 
only  true  God  ;  not  understanding  that,  although  He  is 
an  only  God,  He  must  yet  be  believed  in  with  His  own 
oijioroj^iia.  The  numerical  order  and  distribution  of 
the  Trinity  they  assume  to  be  a  division  of  the  Unity  ; 
whereas  the  Unity  which  draws  the  Trinity  out  of  its 
own  self  is  so  far  from  being  destroyed  that  it  is  actually 
supported  by  it.  They  are  constantly  throwing  out 
against  us  that  we  are  preachers  of  two  gods  and  three 
gods,  while  they  take  to  themselves  pre-eminently  the 
credit  of  being  worshippers  of  the  one  God." 

Tertullian  is  referring  to  the  common  people 
to  whom  the  Supreme  and  Eternal  One,  re- 
vealed in  Jesus  Christ  His  Son,  was  the  ground 
of  faith,  and  to  whom  no  definition  of  God's 
inner  Being,  no  theory  of  a  new  God  in  the 
world,  could  yet  remove  the  conviction  that  a 
new  sense  of  God  and  a  new  regard  for  man 
was  the  contribution  Christianity  had  made  to 
the  world's  happiness. 

With  this  view  we  find  a  striking  agreement 
in  documents  admitted  to  be  the  most  precious 
relics  of  the  faith  of  this  time.  The  letter  to 
Diognetus  holds  high  rank,  as  a  record  of  the 
faith  of  the  second  century,  but  there  is  no 
Trinitarianism    in    it.     The    Teaching  of  the 


io8  One  World  at  a  Time 

Twelve  belongs  to  the  same  century,  but  the 
"Mighty  Maker"  and  his  "servant  Jesus" 
sufficiently  explain  baptism  in  the  name  of  the 
Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost  as 
no  declaration  of  Trinity  in  Unity.  Even  the 
celebration  of  the  divinity  in  Christ  which  we 
encounter  in  Justin  is  not  confused  by  any 
effort  to  make  him  the  equal  of  the  Father. 
For  Justin  declares  :  "  We  worship  and  love 
next  to  God  the  Logos  that  is  from  the  unbe- 
gotten  and  unutterable  Deity,  since  for  us  he 
became  man  that  he  might  share  our  sufferings 
and  effect  our  cure  " 

What  is  called  "  Origen's  Platonic  taint  "  ac- 
cords better  with  the  thought  of  the  third 
century  at  large  than  with  what  is  expected 
of  it    by  later   controversialists.     To   Origen 

"  God  is  the  One  Absolute  Being,  not  supra-cosmic 
only  but  transcendental,  the  self-existent  and  self-suf- 
ficing monad,  who  alone  contemplates  Himself  in  un- 
changing perfection,  called  in  Scripture  the  Father. 
Even  the  Logos  does  not  contemplate  the  Father  as  the 
Father  contemplates  Himself.  The  Son  and  Spirit  are 
not  necessary  to  the  Father  so  far  as  He  is  absolute  God, 
but  only  so  far  as  He  is  Love,  Father,  Creator." 

Here  begins  to  appear  the  triumph  of  Greek 
philosophising  over  the  simplicity  of  Christian 


God  is  One  109 

faith  in  its  devotion  to  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  its  defence  of  his  ideals  with 
ethical  passion.  Origen  and  Tertullian  are 
far  nearer  to  the  Nicene  speculation  than 
their  contemporary,  Minucius  Felix,  who  in 
that  gem  of  dialogue,  Odavius,  omits  all  the 
doctrines  upon  which  the  others  most  insist. 
He  knows  nothing  of  the  Trinity,  and  hints 
only  at  the  divinity  of  Christ  or  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  It  is  entertaining  to  hear  the  com- 
plaint of  those  who  would  use  his  apology 
for  Christianity,  that  while  "  none  of  the  apo- 
logies is  so  elegant,  none  is  so  barren  of 
distinctive  teaching  ;  ...  as  a  statement 
of  the  Christian  case  it  is  extremely  incom- 
plete "  ;  yet  those  who  have  deprived  us  of 
so  much  touching  the  second  and  third  cent- 
uries have  carefully  preserved  this  apology 
of  the  age  of  Severus  (225  a.d.)  answering 
the  charges  made  by  Csecilius  against  Christ- 
ianity. We  cannot  make  the  writers  of  the 
third  century  speak  the  metaphysics  of  the  post- 
Nicene  Church.  If  we  find  a  gratification 
of  later  claims  in  Origen  and  Tertullian  and 
Athanasius,  we  find  the  failure  of  such  ex- 
pectation in  most  of  the  others.  Even  these 
champions  of  the  Trinity  are  inconsistent  with 
the  orthodoxy  of  a  later  time.     They  repeat- 


no  One  World  at  a  Time 

edly  refer  to  the  fall  of  man,  which  Jesus  never 
did,  so  far  as  any  record  shows  ;  but  they  did 
not  make  it  the  foundation  of  their  system 
of  thought  as  does  modern  orthodoxy,  which 
collapses  upon  the  disappearance  of  the 
original  apostasy  from  innocence  in  Eden. 
These  strenuous  advocates  of  the  Nicene 
tendency  did  not  argue  from  the  total  cor- 
ruption of  human  nature  an  atonement  in  any 
of  the  modern  uses  of  the  term  ;  they  did  not 
reason  from  ruin  to  redemption,  but  rather 
from  the  original  order  and  ideal  to  its  realisa- 
tion in  Jesus  Christ.  According  to  Origen 
the  ransom  for  man  is  paid  to  Satan  by  God. 
"  The  general  characteristics  of  the  theology 
of  the  second  and  third  centuries  are  still 
liberty  and  diversity  upon  the  common  ground 
of  a  livinof  faith  in  Christ." 

Platonism  had  made  God  inaccessible,  the 
later  Greek  thought  made  God  inconceiv- 
able. It  remained  for  Roman  Imperialism  to 
make  God  unlovable.  So,  in  a  sense  the 
Patripassians  never  dreamed,  the  Church  "sac- 
rificed the  Father  "  in  the  ardent  longing  to 
have  a  God  lovable  enough  to  be  counted 
human,  loving  enough  to  be  deemed  Divine. 

There  can  be  no  proper  orthodoxy  where 
there  is  no  uniformity  in  the  Church,  and  that 


God  is  One  m 

no  unity  in  this  sense  existed  is  easily  shown. 
As  late  as  the  second  half  of  the  second 
century  "  catholic  "  does  not  mean  **  orthodox  " 
but  "  universal."  It  looks  to  church-extension, 
but  does  not  imply  uniformity  of  thought  or 
form.  Melito,  who  seems  to  recent  writers 
the  perfection  of  orthodoxy,  was  not  orthodox 
to  Orig-en  or  Tertullian.  Orio-en  was  not 
ortiiodox  to  Tertullian,  nor  was  Tertullian 
to  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  His  pupil  Cyprian 
defies  Roman  interference  with  Carthage  ; 
Minucius  Felix  omits  the  doctrines  upon 
which  both  Origen  and  Tertullian  insist.  The 
Shepherd  of  Hennas  seemed  to  Irenseus  in 
line  with  scripture,  but  Tertullian  thought 
it  a  recital  of  "  weak  visions "  and  treated 
it  with  scorn.  This  difference  was  expressed 
by  the  parties  to  the  contention  in  language 
neither  elegant  in  form  nor  Christian  in  spirit. 
The  struggle  against  heresy  was  a  struggle 
for  the  unity  of  God,  which  was  endangered 
by  dualism,  and  for  the  real  humanity  of 
Christ,  which  was  endangered  by  those  who 
made  his  earthly  life  a  mere  phantom,  "  an 
envelope  for  God."  The  Fathers  were  not 
always  clear  as  to  their  own  belief  or  clear  in 
its  expression,  but  they  saw  what  imperilled 
its  essential  principles  ;  these,  prevailing  from 


112  One  World  at  a  Time 

first  to  last,  are  the  absolute  being  of  God 
and  the  real  human  life  of  Christ.  On  these 
points  the  Church  maintained  its  faith  and 
united,  while  dividing  everywhere  else. 

Uniformity  is  not  more  evident  if  we  turn 
to  the  councils.  The  synods  between  the  Ni- 
cene  Council,  a.d.  325,  and  that  at  Constantino- 
ple, A.D.  381,  were  utterly  without  agreement 
as  to  what  had  been  done  at  Nicaea ;  the 
council  of  Ephesus,  a.d.  431,  repudiated  the 
work  of  Constantinople  fifty  years  earlier  and 
forbade  the  use  of  any  other  creed  than  the 
Nicene,  promulgated  in  a.d.  325.  Thus  to- 
day that  late  creed  called  "  Athanasian "  is 
under  the  interdict  of  the  very  council  which 
determined  the  Nicene  supremacy,  and  the 
church  which  recites  both  in  one  service 
recites  creeds  which  mutually  exclude  each, 
other. 

The  statement  of  Dr.  Martineau,  "  To  see 
the  process  of  the  formation  of  a  doctrine  is 
already  to  behold  its  dissolution,"  comes  con- 
stantly before  the  mind  in  such  a  survey  as 
this,  When  you  have  the  Egyptian  triad, 
you  have  the  easy  illustration  of  what  is  soon 
to  be  the  Christian  Trinity.  When  you  read 
the  doom  of  Osiris  and  how  his  merits  are 
claimed  for  the  Osirians,  you  already  have  the 


God  is  One  113 

germ  of  the  vicarious  atonement.  The  strug- 
gle between  the  pictorial  triad  (Egyptian)  and 
the  philosophical  trinity  (Greek)  is,  from  the 
latter  part  of  the  third  century,  the  problem 
to  be  solved  by  speculative  minds  in  the  Christ- 
ian Church.  In  its  lowest  form  the  result  is 
mere  tritheism,  and  so  expresses  itself  in  Art. 
In  its  subtler  form  it  is  mere  metaphysics,  and 
separates  itself  from  the  human  soul  in  the 
very  effort  at  definition  and  symbolism.  Unity 
loses  its  ethical  value  ;  its  service  to  the  intel- 
lect also  declines,  and  that  confusion  ensues  in 
spite  of  which  Christian  thought  has  been  crys- 
talline in  its  moments  of  devotion,  while  turbid 
in  its  efforts  at  theological  uniformity.  The 
centre  of  gravity  was  shifted,  and  men  declared 
that  intellectual  accuracy  is  orthodoxy,  while  a 
holy  life,  without  orthodoxy,  is  "  the  devil's 
way  of  serving  poison  in  a  clean  cup."  As  in 
Egyptian,  so  in  Christian  thought  : 

"All  that  was  needed  was  one  more  effort  of  abstrac- 
tion, to  put  above  and  behind  the  triad  the  Being  in 
whom  it  was  resumed  and  into  whom,  so  to  speak,  it 
melted  ;  that  higher  Unity  was  sometimes  found  in  the 
First  Person  of  the  triad,  regarded  as  reproducing  itself 
by  eternal  generation  ;  sometimes  in  a  '  Spirit  more 
spiritual  than  the  gods  '  ;  the  holy  soul  which  clothes 
itself  with  forms,  but  itself  remains  unkonwn.'. — G. 
d'Alviella,  Hibbert  Lectures,  1891. 


114  One  World  at  a  Time 

In  the  period  we  are  surveying,  there  ap- 
pears a  singular  event.  Rome  is  no  longer 
the  imperial  centre,  except  for  the  Church. 
Constantinople  grasps  the  sceptre  and  holds 
the  throne.  The  world  is  Christian,  but  in  a 
sense  Jesus  never  knew  and  his  apostles  never 
intended.  Alaric  is  Christian  —  and  a  bar- 
barian. Honorius  is  a  Christian  theologian — 
and  a  craven  soul.  Soon  there  will  be  no 
empire  but  that  of  the  Pope,  an  empire  he 
disputes  with  the  Eastern  kings  of  Constanti- 
nople, —  a  Christian  empire  in  which  Christ 
would  have  found  a  speedier  crucifixion.  It  is 
the  age  of  the  great  apostasy  !  An  apostasy 
which  boasted  its  orthodoxy  and  proved  it 
upon  the  bodies  of  all  who  differed  with  its 
exponents.  An  apostasy  beyond  doubt,  in 
that  the  unity  of  God  had  been  lost  to  philo- 
sophic thought,  and  the  Fatherhood  of  God 
sounded  strange  to  hearts  foreign  to  all  com- 
passion. The  Brotherhood  of  Man  had  been 
swallowed  up  by  the  unclean  doctrine  of  total 
depravity.  The  sublime  doctrine  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  as  the  purifier  of  the  heart  had  sunk 
into  the  theory  of  the  dispensation  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  as  a  prerogative  of  the  Church. 
The  religion  of  the  Man  of  Nazareth  had  been 
transformed  into  conflicting  theories  about  his 


God  is  One  115 

person,   for    which    councils    contended   with 
blows  and   scandalous   uproar. 

The  simple  religion  which  had  transfigured 
the  life  of  Israel's  last  great  prophet,  and  from 
that  pure  heart  of  boundless  benevolence  had 
gone  out  to  bless  the  world,  —  this  stream  of 
pure  affection,  sprung  at  once  from  the  remote 
past  and  flowing  afresh  from  the  crystal  fount 
of  a  sublime  life,  had  now  sunk  as  a  desert 
stream  in  the  sand.  The  stream  was  lost  for 
ages  underground,  reappearing  at  intervals  as 
a  spring  to  flow  for  a  little  way,  but  lost  again 
and  again  in  subtilties  of  speculation  or  im- 
purities of  life,  or  used  only  to  move  the  ma- 
chinery of  Christian  institutions. 

Secular  history  calls  the  ages  beginning  with 
the  sixth  century  "  dark."  But  the  history  of 
the  Church  closes  its  short  day  before  the 
light  declines  upon  the  imperial  countenance 
of  Constantine  ;  when  his  politic  edict  is  ut- 
tered the  Church  has  confessed  that  endorse- 
ment by  a  murderer  can  give  it  peace.  The 
scenes  of  the  arena  show  no  longer  the  calm 
courage  of  martyrs  upon  the  one  side  and  the 
fierce  hunger  of  the  wild  beasts  upon  the  other. 
The  conflict  is  transferred  to  the  councils^ 
where  the  antagonists  all  make  the  sign  of 
the  cross  but  shout  opposing  battle-cries   of 


ii6  One  World  at  a  Time 

doctrinal  contention  ;  where  surely  "  the  wrath 
of  man  worketh  not  the  righteousness  of 
God."  Holiness  of  life  is  as  nothing  ;  but 
lips  false  in  all  other  things  speak  the  shib- 
boleth without  stammering.  The  Church  has 
decreed  what  shall  be  the  rule  of  faith  since 
it  has  forsaken  what  was  the  rule  of  faith. 
Solemn  processions  march  to  the  sanctuaries 
singing  the  doctrines  in  Greek  doggerel  ; 
one  party  led  by  a  gaunt  Arian,  the  other  by  a 
fat  eunuch  of  the  Empress,  meet  in  the  streets 
of  Alexandria  and  stone  each  other,  while 
cries  of  *'  homoiousian  "  and  "  homoousian  " 
proclaim  that  "  they  slay  each  other  for  an  iota!'' 
The  Athanasian  doctrine  is  at  the  flood, 
but  it  will  find  its  ebb  within  this  fourth  cent- 
ury. While  the  Arian  emperors  re-establish 
the  mongrel  doctrines  of  Arianism,  there  ap- 
pears upon  the  sky  the  afterglow  of  Pagan- 
ism which  Julian  vainly  calls  a  new  dawn,  not 
knowino-  that  the  sun  of  Paganism  is  set.  At 
the  centres  of  power,  Arianism  again  declines, 
but  its  missionaries  are  carrying  a  conviction 
that  they  teach  "the  truth  of  the  Old  Christ- 
ians "  to  the  hearts  of  the  Goths.  In  the 
far-off  forests  of  central  Europe  the  work  of 
Ulfilas  shall  last  when  the  decrees  of  the  Arian 
emperors  have  been  revoked  at  Rome, 


God  is  One  117 

The  century  closes  ;  as  the  torn  scroll  of  its 
achievement  is  rolled  together  we  read  that 
the  Empire  is  divided  between  East  and  West ; 
the  great  schools  of  theology  are  forging  the 
arms  for  new  contentions.  Upon  the  vacant 
throne  of  Roman  Imperialism  in  the  West  sits 
the  Bishop  of  Rome.  The  world  is  Christian 
according  to  its  own  confession,  and  Pagan 
according  to  every  test  which  the  life  of  Jesus 
and  his  great  words  about  God's  love  can 
supply.  Two  sounds  accompany  the  opening 
decade  of  the  new  century.  Alaric  strikes 
with  his  sword-hilt  upon  the  gates  of  Rome 
and  demands  the  surrender  of  the  Imperial 
City  to  the  barbarian.  Safe  behind  the 
marshes  of  Ravenna,  the  Emperor  Honorius 
clucks  to  his  chickens  in  their  golden  cages. 
The  Church  has  gained  a  creed  and  lost  an 
Empire.  Its  monotheism  has  been  swamped 
by  its  explanations  about  God.  The  reality 
of  God  is  obscured  by  its  definitions.  Ortho- 
doxy is  established  among  the  ruins  of  a 
divided  Church.  The  perdition  which  had 
been  declared  to  be  the  punishment  of  sin  has 
now  become  the  penalty  of  a  mistake.  The 
only  heresy  which  has  nothing  to  recommend 
it  is  now  universal, — the  heresy  which  declares 
that  intellectual  accuracy   is   the  condition  of 


ii8  One  World  at  a  Time 

salvation^  and  a  formula  of  belief  the  guarantee 
of  religion. 

The  tinity  of  faith  perished  in  a  struggle  for 
uniformity  of  statement.  Henceforward  the 
simplicity  of  religion  in  its  earliest  Unitarian 
thought  is  to  be  obscured  and  complicated  by 
contentions  as  to  what  is  the  true  opinion. 
The  critic  takes  the  place  of  the  believer — 
and  for  fifteen  centuries  "  the  battle  of  the 
Churches"  is  waged. 


CHAPTER  V 
WHY  DO  CHRISTIANS  DIFFER? 

THE  battle  of  the  churches  is  over.  If 
not  in  complete  peace,  we  are  at  least,  in 
a  condition  of  unarmed  neutrality.  There  is  a 
uniform  and  widespread  armistice  proclaimed. 
There  is  no  confusion,  except  in  the  minds  of  a 
few,  concerning  the  vital  questions  of  religion  ; 
indeed,  some  of  us  sometimes  fear  that  there 
is  inertia,  stagnation,  in  the  place  of  whole- 
some agitation.  And  yet,  we  are  not  of  the 
number  who  seek  to  project  a  conflict. 
Rather  let  the  pools  of  thought  cleanse  them- 
selves by  the  freshets  of  contemporary  opinion 
flowing  into  them.  Let  not  any  devout  soul 
stir  them,  lest,  if  there  be  stagnation,  their 
miasma  get  abroad,  and  lest  they  simply  set- 
tle down  to  their  own  sediment  again.  Rather 
let  the  new  streams  of  contemporary  thought 
flush  them  out,  while  we  watch  to  see  the 
progress  of  the  human  mind. 

I    call    attention    now    to    certain    reasons 
119 


I20  One  World  at  a  Time 

for  the  critical  attitude  prevailing  in  spite  of 
these  conditions  that  I  have  named.  How  is 
it  that  the  faith  held  by  a  great  number  in  the 
world  of  modern  thought  becomes  a  subject  of 
dispute  and  criticism  in  other  minds?  How 
does  criticism  of  Unitarianism  arise  ? 

First,  then,  because  of  a  misplaced  emphasis 
in  those  critical  minds.  What  a  sentence 
means  depends  largely  upon  its  emphasis,  and 
what  a  mind  means  depends  largely  upon  its 
emphasis  ;  and  when  the  emphasis  is  laid  in 
the  wrong  place,  however  actively  the  mind 
may  express  itself,  it  expresses  itself  to  small 
purpose.  It  is  difficult  for  two  minds,  differ- 
ently emphasising  what  they  consider  import- 
ant, to  get  together,  to  see  alike,  to  say  the 
same  thing,  to  be  in  unison  ;  and  much  of  the 
criticism  to  which  I  shall  refer  in  the  follow- 
ing pages  is  due  to  a  misplaced  emphasis  in 
religion. 

For  instance,  it  is  never  said  that  people 
of  our  way  of  thinking  are  immoral.  On  the 
contrary,  we  are  accused  of  having  "  mere 
morality."  What  "mere  morality"  may  be,  in 
a  universe  so  closely  knit  together  in  its  parts 
as  this  in  which  we  live,  I  fail  to  understand. 
How  morality  can  be  other  than  the  guarantee 
of  religion,  it  is  difficult  to  determine.     But  we 


Why  do  Christians  Differ?        121 

are  never  called  immoral.  It  would  be  a  vain 
attack  which  should  take  that  form.  For, 
however  the  saintliness  in  those  who  are  saintly 
may  be  accused  of  being  only  "good  form," 
it  is  good  form  still  ;  and  I  suspect  it  is 
good  form  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  So 
the  emphasis  is  not  laid  upon  life  at  all.  The 
objection  is  not  made  that  we  do  not  live 
well,  that  we  do  not  behave  well,  that  we  do 
not  deport  ourselves  consonantly  with  the  in- 
terests of  society.  We  are  not  accused  of 
being  law-breakers  or  offenders  against  any 
code  of  good  behaviour.  On  the  contrary,  we 
are  said  to  be  quite  complacent  and  well- 
behaved  people  ;  we  are  accused  of  being  too 
serene  and  undisturbed.  That  is  not  true  ; 
and  to  the  answer  of  that  criticism  I  shall 
come  later  on.  The  emphasis  of  the  critic  is 
misplaced  ;  it  is  laid  upon  doctrine  and  not 
upon  life.  If  the  emphasis  were  laid  on  life, 
then  the  exactness  of  our  deportment,  the 
rectitude  of  our  behaviour,  the  integrity  of  our 
method,  the  whole  moral  tenor  of  our  life 
would  receive  the  emphasis  ;  for,  after  all,  the 
business  of  life  is  living,  and  Matthew  Arnold 
was  inside  the  truth  when  he  said  :  "  conduct 
is  three-fourths  of  life."  I  should  say  it  is  the 
other  fourth  also,  and  that  conduct  is  all  there 


122  One  World  at  a  Time 

is  of  life.  Whatever  may  inspire  the  conduct, 
whatever  may  grace  the  conduct,  whatever  may 
adorn  the  conduct  or  may  result  from  the  con- 
duct, still,  after  all,  I  am  conducting  my  life  on 
a  given  principle. 

Now,  the  emphasis,  if  laid  on  doctrine, 
misses  altogfether  what  life  means.  What  is 
doctrine  ?  It  is  a  more  or  less  accurate  defini- 
tion of  how  one  man  interprets  religion  to 
another  man.  If  men  were  isolate  and  alone, 
separate,  secluded,  each  man  might  be  able  to 
conduct  his  religious  life  on  terms  of  the 
highest  rectitude,  without  the  necessity  for 
definition.  But  the  moment  another  man  ap- 
pears and  says,  "  Why  do  you  worship,  and 
whom  ?  What  do  you  believe,  and  why  ? 
What  are  the  motives  of  action,  and  how  did 
you  come  by  them  ?  W^hat  is  the  experience 
of  life  in  its  highest  terms  ?  "  immediately  there 
must  be  definition.  In  other  words,  I  must 
define  or  delimit,  draw  a  line  round  and  make 
a  demarcation  of  the  whole  plat  of  my  think- 
ing. I  must  map  out  my  mind  to  the  man 
who  inquires,  so  that  he  will  know  where  to 
find  me  on  this  or  that  aspect  of  life.  That 
is  definition.  But  when  a  man  comes  and 
says,  "  Now  you  have  not  the  right  definition," 
it  is  like  saying  to  a  cook  who  Is  preparing  a 


Why  do  Christians  Differ?        123 

repast,  which  is,  by  the  proof  of  her  experi- 
ence, Hkely  to  be  a  very  deHcious  repast, 
"  But  you  have  not  the  right  recipe."  She 
points  to  the  viands,  and  says,  "  Why  ?  They 
are  edible,  dehcious,  approved  by  the  house- 
hold." So  somebody  who  thinks  definition  is 
the  thing,  —  that  the  recipe  is  the  food,  that  the 
prescription  is  the  medicine,  —  arraigns  another 
man  on  the  ground  that  he  has  not  the  right 
definition.  It  is  exactly  like  one  who  has 
found  a  new  star  by  the  telescope  in  the  ob- 
servatory being  accused  by  another  astron- 
omer, who  has  been  working  on  the  matter 
mathematically  to  see  where  the  star  ought  to 
be  in  the  sidereal  universe,  that  he  has  not 
shown  the  formula  by  which  the  calculation 
was  made,  by  which  the  star  was  discovered. 
He  says  to  him,  "  You  cannot  give  the  defini- 
tion ;  you  cannot  state  the  formula."  The 
other  man  turns  to  him  and  says,  ''There  is 
the  star  / "  So  the  emphasis  is  laid  on  the 
wrong  thing  when  laid  upon  accuracy  of  state- 
ment, upon  definition,  upon  opinion.  These 
all  change,  and  human  life,  with  a  certainty 
that  is  simply  sublime,  goes  on  calmly  ripen- 
ing its  experiences,  developing  its  powers, 
and  assuring  itself  by  converse  with  reality. 
The  emphasis  is  misplaced  not  only  in  the 


124  One  World  at  a  Time 

fact  that  doctrine  is  put  instead  of  life,  but 
also  because  the  objector  is  often  not  con- 
cerned about  the  right  thing.  If  you  are  con- 
cerned about  the  saving  of  your  soul,  as  the 
major  part  of  the  Christian  Church  used  to 
be  concerned,  then  the  emphasis  is  misplaced, 
for  you  cannot  save  your  soul.  If  you  are 
ever  saved,  your  soul  will  do  it.  You  could 
just  as  well  talk  about  a  man,  saving  his  seed- 
wheat  by  keeping  it  in  his  barn.  He  saved 
it ;  and  his  field  has  grown  up  to  grass.  He 
has  not  any  harvest,  but  he  has  saved  his 
seed-wheat.  Another  man  does  not  save  it 
at  all,  but  flings  it  into  the  ground,  which  he 
has  ploughed  and  harrowed,  prepared  and 
mellowed,  until  it  is  ready  for  just  that  kind 
of  thing  that  seed-wheat  is.  He  flings  it 
away  and  says,  "  I  don't  want  to  save  it  "  ; 
but  the  next  autumn  the  abundant  harvest 
of  his  rich  acres  will  show  that  his  seed-wheat 
saved  him.  It  is  just  so  with  the  soul.  You 
cannot  "save  your  soul "  without  "losing  it." 
If  you  are  ever  saved  your  soul  will  be  the 
saving  power ;  and  it  will  not  be  saved,  in 
my  judgment,  unless  it  is  worth  it.  So  that, 
if  the  emphasis  is  laid  upon  salvation,  in  the 
sense  of  taking  care  of  your  immortal  soul, 
the  result,  when  it  is  not  ludicrous,  is  tragic  ; 


Why  do  Christians  Differ?         125 

and  the  objector  who  comes  and  says,  "  You 
don't  try  to  save  your  soul,"  is  quite  right. 
We  do  not.  That  is  not  our  business.  God 
put  into  man  the  breath  of  Hfe,  and  said  to 
him,  "  Save  your  kind."  So  the  emphasis  of 
the  objector  is  laid  in  the  wrong  place,  be- 
cause it  is  laid  on  the  wrong  thing.  He  is 
not  concerned  about  the  right  object  of  life, 
which  is  not  saving  one's  self,  but  saving  the 
other  man.  Swim  ashore,  let  the  other  man 
drown  !  stand  dripping,  and  see  him  go  down  ! 
That  is  the  attitude  of  a  man  who  wants  to 
save  his  soul.  The  business  of  life  is  to  get 
a  grip  on  something  that  is  not  strong  enough 
to  strike  out  for  itself.  The  whole  business 
of  life  is  to  make  the  world  better.  I  think 
that  God  did  not  make  it  very  well  in  the 
beginning,  simply  to  give  us  a  task ;  just  as, 
in  the  old  legend,  He  brought  the  creatures 
before  the  first  man,  it  is  said,  "  to  see  what 
he  would  call  them."  That  is  a  touch  of 
comedy  in  the  ancient  story.  He  made  them 
pass  before  Adam  "  to  see  what  he  would  call 
them,"  and  when  he  had  given  them  all  names, 
God  said  to  him,  "  This  garden  is  for  you 
to  cultivate.  Let  yourselves  be  fruitful  and 
multiply  and  replenish  the  earth.  Cultivate 
and  dress  the  garden."     And  ever   since  the 


126  One  World  at  a  Time 

first  work-day  in  the  world,  the  business  of 
life  has  been  to  carry  on  what  God  started, 
but  did  not  make  complete.  We  are  there- 
fore "workers  together  with  God"  ;  and  when 
we  are  objected  to  on  the  ground  that  we  are 
not  saving  our  souls,  we  answer  :  "  From  the 
time  of  Channing  in  the  century  that  has  just 
passed,  until  now,  the  emphasis  has  been  upon 
public  life  among  us.  From  the  days  of 
Tuckerman  in  the  last  century,  until  now,  the 
emphasis  has  been  upon  scientific,  organised, 
capable  work  with  our  fellows  in  what  is  now 
known  as  organised  charity  ;  and  in  our  own 
theological  schools,  so  much  is  this  emphasis 
understood  that  in  each  of  them  there  is  a 
chair  of  Sociology,  on  the  ground  that  a 
minister  who  knows  theology  and  does  not 
know  sociology  is  only  a  half-equipped  man." 
Indeed,  I  think  all  theology  might  be  left 
one  side,  provided  we  knew  about  folk  and 
worked  upon  our  fellows  for  the  bettering 
of  the  world.  The  business  of  religion  is  to 
add  zest  to  life,  to  make  it  so  well  worth  liv- 
ing, in  the  religious  man's  estimation,  that  he 
shall  hunger  in  heart  to  make  it  more  worth 
while  to  the  other  man.  So  this  misplaced 
emphasis  is  the  first  reason  for  the  arising  of 
criticism. 


Why  do  Christians  Differ?        127 

The  second  reason  for  its  appearance  is 
ignorance.  One  body  of  Christians  criticises 
another,  largely  because  of  the  lack  of  exact 
knowledge.  Now,  ignorance  is  a  very  relative 
term.  A  banker  would  be  perfectly  justified 
in  saying  to  the  clergyman  :  "  Your  specialty  is 
not  banking  ;  therefore  I  hold  you  to  be,  from 
my  standpoint,  ignorant."  But  the  clergyman 
might  retort,  "  Your  business  is  not  knowing 
the  philosophy  of  religion,  the  history  of  the- 
ology. You  are  not  dealing  continually  with 
the  souls  of  men  at  first  hand,  in  that  per- 
petual confession  that  comes  into  a  minister's 
life ;  therefore,  so  far  as  my  vocation  is  con- 
cerned, I  hold  you  to  be  an  ignorant  man." 
And  so  it  would  run  all  the  way  through. 
The  musician  says  to  the  man  who  sings  four 
different  tunes  to  the  four  lines  of  a  hymn, 
"  You  are  ignorant  of  music."  He  is  quite 
right.  The  only  trouble  with  the  man  is  that 
he  is  not  dumb  as  well,  so  that  he  attempt  not 
the  impossible.  The  artist  says  to  the  people 
in  the  inartistic  walks  of  life  who  cannot  under- 
stand a  black-and-white  drawing,  who  cannot 
see  anything  in  it,  but  must  have  something 
that  is  in  sharp  contrasts  of  color,  "  You  have 
not  an  artistic  appreciation."  He  is  quite 
right.     Ignorance  is  a  movable  term.      So  I 


128  One  World  at  a  Time 

say  of  people  who  offer  criticism  of  us,  they 
are  ignorant  about  the  thing  of  which  they  are 
talking.  Let  me  tell  you  what  they  ought 
to  know  in  order  to  be  competent  to  offer 
opinions  of  a  critical  kind  on  the  Unitarian 
faith. 

They  ought  to  know  the  struggle  of  soul 
which  comes  to  one  who  wants  to  find  God 
for  himself.  They  may  have  that ;  they  must 
have  that  in  order  to  offer  an  opinion  about 
anybody's  religion.  Then  they  should  know 
the  first  three  centuries  of  Christianity  better 
than  the  last  three  centuries  of  human  history, 
or  as  well,  if  they  are  particularly  apt  as  histor- 
ical students.  In  the  next  place,  they  should  be 
experts  in  Biblical  criticism,  both  of  the  Old  and 
the  New  Testaments,  and  have  a  large  general 
knowledge  of  universal  religion.  They  should 
be  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  great  ethnic 
faiths  ;  should  know  the  Dhammapada  ap- 
proximately as  well  as  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount ;  should  know  the  Bhavagadghita  ap- 
proximately as  well  as  the  Gospels  of  the  New 
Testament ;  should  know  the  Vedic  Hymns 
as  well  as  the  hymns  of  the  Christian  Church. 
When  they  are  dealing  in  criticism  of  people 
who  claim  to  go  back  to  universal  religion,  to 
deal  with  things  at  first  hand,  who  do  not  care 


Why  do  Christians  Differ?         129 

for  sacerdotalism  of  any  kind  or  institutional 
life  as  affecting  the  Church,  then  they  must 
know  these  things  and  many  others.  And  if 
they  do  not  know  these,  and,  nevertheless,  of- 
fer their  criticism,  they  are  simply  skimming 
the  surface  of  their  minds.  It  is  very  im- 
promptu,— very  much  like  an  improvisation  of 
criticism  about  an  historic  fact. 

Ignorance  may  be  of  another  kind, —  ignor- 
ance of  the  motive-power  of  the  religion  criti- 
cised. There  is  a  vast  deal  of  that.  For 
instance,  take  the  administration  of  the  United 
States,  for  illustration, — to  venture  upon  deli- 
cate ground.  If  I  am  a  critic  of  the  administra- 
tion of  my  country,  I  should  not  only  have,  as 
in  the  other  matter  just  referred  to,  as  much 
knowledge  of  the  facts  as  the  administration 
has,  so  that,  if  I  were  given  the  opportunity,  I 
could  step  into  the  Cabinet  and  bear  my  share 
of  the  responsibility,  take  the  portfolio  of  the 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  or  of  the  Treasury,  and 
bear  my  part  in  the  place  of  the  absentee  whose 
place  I  have  taken, — I  must  not  only  know  all 
these  facts,  but  I  must  understand,  in  addition 
to  them,  the  motive  and  genius  and  method  of 
the  administration  in  a  given  period.  I  must 
know  what  it  never  has  told  to  any  man.  I 
must  know  what  it  hopes  to  achieve  in  the 


130  One  World  at  a  Time 

end,  which  does  not  yet  appear  as  a  matter  of 
history.  That  is  the  reason  some  of  us  feel 
impatience  with  critics  of  great  national  ques- 
tions,— that  they  have  no  trust  except  in  the 
edge  of  their  own  scalpel,  and  they  dissect  and 
dismember  and  criticise  without  knowledge, 
because  they  are  ignorant,  first,  of  the  facts 
which  to-morrow's  paper  may  contradict,  as 
they  apprehend  them  ;  and,  second,  of  the  mot- 
ive and  genius  of  administration,  which  lies 
behind  the  things  that  are  being  done.  So  in 
religious  movements ;  for  religion  has  a  mot- 
ive-power ;  it  is  directed  toward  a  definite 
end  ;  it  seeks  to  achieve  by  a  given  method  a 
given  result.  Just  as  in  Rome  you  say  the 
motive  was  power  ;  in  Greece  you  say  the  mo- 
tive was  art ;  in  the  Orient  the  motive  was 
meditation,  and  in  the  Occident  the  motive 
is  enterprise ;  so  in  every  division  of  the  hu- 
man family  you  discover  the  motive,  and  then 
have  the  key  to  unlock  the  secrets  of  its  his- 
tory. So,  in  every  religious  movement  there 
is  a  conviction  that  characterises  it,  a  method 
of  thinking  that  belongs  to  it.  I  think  Ed- 
ward Everett  Hale  is  not  far  wrong  when  he 
says  that  the  establishment  of  an  Unitarian 
Church  in  a  town  means  increased  facilities 
in  the  sanitation  of  that  neighbourhood.      It 


Why  do  Christians  Differ? 


i^i 


means  also  a  tightening  up  of  the  whole  of 
life's  obligations  ;  it  means  a  simplifying  of  the 
terms  of  religion. 

Still  another  reason  for  criticism  among 
Christians  is  the  dependence  upon  atUhority. 
Usually  the  critic  is  somebody  who  is  quoting 
somebody  else.  He  is  "  a  scribe  and  a  Phar- 
isee "  in  that  sense.  They  marvelled  at  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  because  he  spoke  "  as  one 
having  authority,  and  not  as  their  scribes," 
who  always  quoted  something  somebody  else 
said.  So  the  critic  is  quoting  his  criticism. 
Students  of  literature  know  how  true  that 
is.  You  sometimes  stumble  upon  a  man 
who  "  knows  everything  there  is  in  Shake- 
speare." I  came  upon  such  a  man  the  other 
day,  and  he  commenced  to  recite  Shake- 
speare to  me  ;  but  as  he  made  two  or  three 
radical  blunders,  not  in  reading,  but  in  the 
meaning  of  the  text,  I  did  not  remain.  I 
could  not  afford  the  time.  He  was  a  simple 
Shakespeare  parrot,  without  its  colours  and 
its  excuse  for  being.  So  those  who  are  study- 
ing literary  criticism,  as  every  man  in  the  min- 
istry must,  know  perfectly  well  that  for  the 
most  part  the  critics  are  retailing  some  ancient 
opinion  about  the  thing  in  hand,  and  when 
you  get  a  man  who  deals  with  the  matter  at 


132  One  World  at  a  Time 

first  hand  you  receive  a  kind  of  shock.  The 
conclusions  of  such  a  critic  may  not  be  exact  ; 
but  he  is  dealing  with  things  at  first  hand. 

So  the  critic  of  a  religious  kind  is  often 
simply  a  quoting  person,  who  says,  "  Dr.  So- 
and-so  said,"  or,  "  The  commentator  of  such  a 
period  has  said,"  or,  "  This  or  that  Church 
holds  concerning  you."  Send  him  away  until 
he  can  come  with  something  which  is  his  own. 
A  friend  of  mine  heard  a  distinguished  Eng- 
lish preacher  in  a  cathedral  in  the  Orient, 
and  she  came  away  saying,  "  The  Canon  said 
'  this  is  the  received  doctrine  of  the  Church,' 
'  the  Church  has  always  held,'  '  It  is  com- 
commonly  believed  amongst  us,'  but  he 
says  nothing  of  what  he  himself  believes." 
Then  the  distinguished  preacher  was  ac- 
costed by  his  friend  who  heard  this  state- 
ment and  repeated  it  to  him,  saying,  "  My 
daughter  says  you  said  nothing  out  of  your 
mind  this  morning,  but  said,  '  The  common 
opinion  is,'  '  The  Church  has  always  held,'  " 
his  answer  was,  **  How  very  acute  !  Few 
persons  would  have  observed  it !  "  That  is 
trifiing.  That  just  escapes  being  wicked  by 
being  inane.  A  man  with  the  serious  business 
of  life  on  hand  covers  his  statement  with  quot- 
ation marks,  as  though  he  knew  nothing  of 


Why  do  Christians  Differ?        133 

his  own  mind  !  That  is  the  usual  attitude 
of  the  critic  of  another  man's  rehgion.  He  is 
retaihng  at  a  lower  price  something  that  he 
has  found,  and  therefore  can  afford  to  sell  it 
below  the  market  value.  It  was  not  a  discov- 
ery on  his  part.  He  did  not  make  it.  He 
did  not  dig  it  out.  He  simply  picked  it  up. 
It  was  not  his.  He  then  passed  it  along  with 
just  a  little  acid  added.  Now,  if  there  is  any- 
thing more  useless  than  that,  I  do  not  happen 
to  remember  at  this  moment  what  it  is. 

Finally,  criticism  of  one  form  of  faith  by 
another  often  has  its  root  in  denominational 
pride.  I  can  understand  anybody's  being 
proud  of  what  has  been  achieved.  We 
ride  with  Paul  Revere  because  he  dared,  and 
stand  with  "  the  embattled  farmers "  at  Lex- 
ington because  they  dared.  We  review  the 
great  periods  of  our  national  history  because 
it  is  something  done,  something  achieved.  We 
take  up  the  autobiography  of  Booker  Washing- 
ton, Up  from  Slavery,  and  follow  the  boy  from 
his  almost  unknown  beQfinninor  until  he  becomes 
the  most  useful  man  of  his  race  in  America, 
because  it  is  something  done,  something  ac- 
complished. But  why  should  anybody  get 
excited  about  a  table  of  statistics  ?  Shown  by 
the  census,  the  cost  of  church  building  in  this 


134  One  World  at  a  Time 

country,  proportionate  to  the  number  engaged, 
falls  first  on  the  Jew,  and  then  on  the  Unitarian. 
But  it  was  a  mere  matter  of  fact ;  not  a  sub- 
ject for  boasting.  Or  when  great  annual  meet- 
ings are  held  by  denominations,  to  recite  their 
achievements  of  increasing  membership,  of 
churches  built,  of  enriched  liturgy,  of  what- 
ever it  may  be,  it  is  a  thing  to  be  allowed  by  a 
sane  mind,  but  it  cannot  be  very  interesting  to 
anybody  that  has  anything  to  do.  I  am  re- 
minded of  the  dialogue  between  Emerson  and 
Lowell  on  top  of  the  tower  of  Notre  Dame  in 
Paris.  Emerson  was  talking  about  Alcott,  and 
he  said  to  Lowell,  "  I  asked  Alcott  what  he 
had  ever  done.  He  said  he  had  written  so  and 
so,  he  had  thought  this  and  that.  *  But,'  I  said, 
'  What  have  you  ever  done  ?  '  And  then,"  said 
Emerson,  "  the  Brahmin  turned  to  me  and  said, 
'  If  Pythagoras  should  come  to  Concord,  whom 
would  he  ask  to  see  ? '  "  There  you  have  it. 
You  say  that  is  colossal  self-conceit.  Well,  it 
is  the  same  thing  as  denominational  pride.  It 
is  the  "counting  of  the  hosts  of  the  Lord." 
It  is  as  the  old  story  in  that  charming  legend 
of  Gideon,  who,  when  he  found  there  were  ten 
thousand  who  were  ready  to  take  sword  against 
the  enemies  of  Jehovah,  had  impressed  upon 
him  by  the  Divine  command  that  there  were 


Why  do  Christians  Differ?        135 

too  many,  and  so  he  led  them  down  to  the 
stream,  and  nine  thousand  seven  hundred  fiuno- 
themselves  down  upon  their  faces  and  swilled 
the  water  out  of  the  stream  as  a  preparation 
for  battle,  and  three  hundred  lapped  it  out 
of  their  hands,  drinking  as  a  dog  drinks;  and 
these  three  hundred  were  chosen.  The  feel- 
ing comes  upon  the  human  mind  that  not 
numbers,  nor  institutions,  nor  popularity,  nor 
fashionable  adherents,  nor  anything  else 
counts,  but  simply  ability  to  swing  the  weapon 
and  cut  your  way  through  ;  and  denominational 
pride  has  much  to  do  with  the  criticism  which 
says,  "  Why,  you  are  one  of  the  smallest  de- 
nominations on  the  face  of  the  earth."  We 
had  not  denied  that  fact ;  and  sometimes  that 
church  that  rates  us  as  small,  is  itself  only  sixth 
in  the  order  of  denominations  of  the  country 
at  largre,  but  swells  in  numbers  where  reliofion 
is  made  easy  and  popular  and  fashionable. 

So  when  we  examine  the  criticisms  that 
we  are  to  analyse  in  these  succeeding  chap- 
ters, we  have  to  bear  in  mind  that  they  arise 
either  from  misplaced  emphasis,  or  from  the 
domination  of  fear,  or  from  denominational 
pride,  or  from  some  merely  meretricious  and 
external  thing,  and  that  therefore,  whilst  they 
do  not  hurt  us,  they  ought  to  be  considered 


136  One  World  at  a  Time 

for  the  benefit  of  those,  most  of  all,  who, 
being  almost  as  uninformed  as  the  critic, 
are  more  easily  affected  by  the  criticism 
itself. 


CHAPTER  VI 

WHAT  IS  IT  TO  BELIEVE  IN  CHRIST? 

J  APPROACH  the  subject  with  some  diffid- 
A  ence,  not  because  I  am  not  sure  of  what 
Unitarians  beheve  respecting  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth, but  because  it  is  so  easy,  when  one  is 
touched  to  the  quick  by  such  a  criticism  as 
this,  to  put  into  the  answer  a  Httle  more  feel- 
ing than  a  judicial  attitude  of  mind  would  war- 
rant. For  this  is  about  the  only  thing  that  is 
said  asfainst  us  that  we  care  for.  We  do  care 
when  people  say  that  we  do  not  believe  in 
Christ,  and  for  various  reasons. 

In  the  first  place,  we  are  sorry  that  people 
should  make  such  a  mistake,  because  the  mis- 
take hurts  them.  It  cannot  hurt  us  except  in 
one  way,  and  that  is,  it  keeps  reverent  people 
from  coming  to  us  who  have  nowhere  else  to 
go.  There  are  many  people  who  have  fallen 
out  of  line  with  much  of  the  received  doctrine 
of  the  churches  called  Evangelical,  who  are 
hindered    from    allying   themselves   with    the 

137 


138  One  World  at  a  Time 

Unitarian  method  of  life  and  faith,  because 
they  believe  when  it  is  said  that  Unitarians  do 
not  believe  in  Christ  that  something  true  has 
been  said.  And  we  lament  this ;  although 
we  are  not  given  to  proselyting  and  do  not 
care  to  make  many  disciples  for  disciples-sake  ; 
we  feel  with  Emerson  when  he  was  reproached 
with  having  no  disciples  at  the  end  of  twenty- 
five  years  of  teaching,  and  said,  "  What 
should  I  do  with  them  if  they  came  to 
me  ?  I  should  have  to  send  them  back  to 
themselves."  So  discipleship  for  discipleship's 
sake  does  not  appeal  to  us.  But,  in  spite  of 
this,  we  have  a  hospitable  faith.  We  do  de- 
sire to  receive  amongf  ourselves  those  whom 
we  may  help  ;  and  when  reverent  people,  who 
are  the  only  people  we  care  about  having 
come,  are  kept  away  by  the  false  statement 
that  we  do  not  believe  in  Christ,  we  mourn 
for  their  sakes  that  about  the  only  place  where 
they  could  have  a  reverent  attitude  toward 
Christ,  having  given  up  the  other  forms  of 
faith,  has  been  shut  to  them  by  this  aspersion 
which  is  not  true. 

There  is  another  reason  why  this  criticism 
touches  us.  It  gives  us  a  feeling  of  hopeless- 
ness about  the  religious  education  of  the  world. 
When    a   thing   so    simple    is    so    completely 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    139 

misunderstood,  it  makes  one  feel  that  no- 
thing can  be  explained ;  and  that  if  such  a 
mistake,  with  so  small  an  occasion,  with  such 
an  abandonment  of  all  proper  inquiry,  can  be 
made,  almost  any  mistake  might  be  made  that 
hinders  the  reliijious  education  of  the  world. 

So  much  for  the  subject,  which  I  approach 
with  diffidence,  as  I  say,  because  I  shall  try  not 
to  put  into  it  that  deep  feeling  with  respect  to 
the  criticism  which  we  all  feel  when  it  is  made, 
for  reasons  a  part  of  which  I  have  given. 

We  come  immediately  to  the  inquiry.  What 
would  it  be  not  to  believe  in  Christ  ?  There 
are  only  three  ways  in  which  it  is  possible 
for  a  human  soul  not  to  believe  in  Christ. 

The  first  is  to  believe  that  he  never  existed  ; 
and  a  very  large  school — the  Tubingen  school 
of  criticism,  led  by  Strauss  and  Baur — for  a 
whole  generation  maintained  "  the  mythical 
theory  "  with  regard  to  the  gospel  narratives  of 
the  life  of  Christ.  It  only  needed  fresh  insight 
into  history,  and  new  study  of  the  gospels 
to  dismiss  that  "mythical  "  theory.  It  is  not 
held  by  any  German  scholar  to-day,  so  far  as  I 
know.  I  believe  there  is  one  man  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Berlin  who  holds  it  with  a  kind  of  at- 
tenuated adherence,  and  claims  the  "  mythical  " 
theory  of  the   life   of   Christ  ;    but   of    this   I 


I40  One  World  at  a  Time 

am  not  quite  sure.  But  the  school  of  Strauss 
and  Baur,  however  useful  they  may  have  been, 
— Strauss  being  made  familiar  to  readers  of 
English  through  the  translation  of  his  Life  of 
Jesus  by  George  Eliot, — was  only  for  a  time. 
It  was  an  evanescent  protest  against  the  his- 
torical Jesus.  There  are  a  few  unthinking 
people — people  who  do  not  read,  nor  study, 
nor  think  things  down  to  the  ground — who  be- 
lieve that  Jesus  never  existed.  They  might  be 
said  not  to  believe  in  Christ  ;  and  the  remedy 
for  them  would  be  to  put  into  their  hands 
the  argument  of  an  English  Ecclesiastic, 
who  applied  the  same  theory  and  system  of 
reasoning  to  Napoleon  Bonaparte  and  proved 
that  he  never  existed.  That  is  the  easy 
answer  to  those  people,  whose  theory  is  based 
in  sophistry  and  lapse  of  logic,  the  assumption 
of  premises  that  are  not  premises,  and  then 
the  application  to  them  of  a  logical  process, 
which  may  be  accurate  enough  when  the  false 
premise  is  admitted.  So  that  if  it  were  true 
of  Unitarians  that  they  did  not  believe  that 
Jesus  ever  lived,  they  might  be  said  not  to  be- 
lieve in  Christ.  But,  on  the  contrary,  if  there 
is  one  body  of  people,  one  set  of  scholars,  who 
have  rescued  the  historical  Jesus  from  the  en- 
wrapping, disfiguring  disguises  of  theology,  it 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    141 

is  the  people  of  our  faith.  We  have  re-estab- 
hshed  as  a  historical  verity  the  life  and  method 
of  life  of  Jesus  Christ ;  so  in  that  sense  it  can- 
not be  said  that  we  do  not  believe  in  Christ. 

There  is  a  second  way  in  which  It  might  be 
true  that  one  did  not  believe  in  Christ.  It 
might  be  said  that  one  did  not  believe  in 
Christ  who  agreed  that  he  did  exist,  but  that 
he  was  not  such  a  character  as  he  was  repre- 
sented to  be.  That  Is,  that  the  stories  of  the 
Gospels  and  the  other  writings  of  the  New 
Testament  gave  a  roseate  hue  to  a  life  that 
was  not  really  as  It  was  represented.  That 
would  mean  that  the  writers  out  of  their  own 
consciousness  had  evolved  a  character  for 
which  no  actuality  existed,  no  possible  author- 
ity could  be  given.  They  would  be  exactly 
in  the  situation  of  the  man  who  *'  evolved  the 
camel  out  of  his  own  consciousness."  It  was 
a  creature  unknown  to  zoology,  absolutely 
unrepresented  In  any  museum  or  menagerie  ; 
but  he  evolved  the  camel  out  of  his  own  con- 
sciousness— he  had  a  camel-consciousness.  So 
that  If  one  were  to  say  that  Christ  did  exist, 
but  was  not  the  character  he  was  represented 
to  be,  such  a  person  might  be  said  not  to  be- 
lieve in  Christ.  On  the  contrary,  we  have 
taken  pains  to  find  out  what  his  character  was  ; 


142  One  World  at  a  Time 

we  have  discriminated  between  the  documents  ; 
we  have  separated  them  by  the  keen  edge  of 
critical  discernment,  saying  that  such  and  such 
things  could  not  possibly  be  true  of  him,  be- 
cause they  are  inconsistent  with  the  consensus 
of  what  his  character  was.  We  have  put  away 
from  him  those  things  which  tradition  had  at- 
tached to  him  as  a  reproach.  For  this  reason 
the  Church  set  aside  all  the  Apocryphal  gos- 
pels, not  because  there  was  nothing  good  in 
them,  but  because  the  consensus  of  them  was 
untrue  to  the  Gospels  of  the  New  Testament 
which  gave  us  the  character  of  Jesus.  So  in 
that  sense  it  cannot  be  said  that  Unitarians  do 
not  believe  in  Christ. 

The  third  way,  and  only  other  way  I  can 
conceive  of  in  which  one  may  not  believe  in 
Christ,  is,  though  he  admit  that  Christ  did 
exist  and  was  just  the  character  described  in 
the  Gospels,  that  he  deliberately  say,  "  That  is 
not  the  kind  of  character  that  I  desire  ;  that 
is  not  the  sort  of  leader  I  will  have ;  that  is  not 
the  Saviour  I  want;  he  is  nothing  to  me  !  His 
open-handed  generosity  taught  the  trustee- 
ship of  all  good  gifts  from  God  ;  I  prefer  to 
grab  everything  in  sight  and  keep  it  for  my 
own.  Instead  of  being  the  disburser  of  God's 
mercies,    I    prefer  to  be  the  grave  of  God'^ 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    143 

mercies.  If  he  says,  '  Blessed  are  the  peace- 
makers,' I  prefer  war.  I  believe  the  sword  is 
the  arbiter  of  human  destiny  ;  not  reason  nor 
the  spirit  of  love."  So  such  a  mind  might  run 
through  all  those  splendid  utterances  which 
constitute  the  law  of  human  life,  and  say,  "  I 
will  have  none  of  it.  His  character  does  not 
please  me.  His  leadership  shall  not  lead  me. 
I  will  go  my  own  way  in  spite  of  him,  although 
he  lived  and  was  such  a  character  as  he  is 
represented  to  be."  That  man  would  em- 
phatically be  chargeable  with  not  believing  in 
Christ. 

These  are  the  three  ways  in  which  one  may 
not  believe  in  Christ.  First,  that  he  did  not 
exist ;  second,  if  he  existed,  he  was  not  the 
person  described,  third,  if  he  existed  and  was 
the  person  described,  he  was  not  the  kind  of 
person  to  love  and  follow. 

Now,  having  dismissed  those  three  as  utterly 
inapplicable  to  our  state  of  mind,  I  ask  you. 
What  is  it  to  believe  in  him  ? 

The  first  business  of  the  believer  is  to  know 
what  he  believes.  A  general,  vague  suscept- 
ibility to  anything  that  comes  our  way  is  not 
faith.  That  is  credulity.  That  is  what  hap- 
pens in  a  street  when  the  rain  flushes  it  with 
water  and  the  sewers  are  open.     Everything 


144  One  World  at  a  Time 

runs  whither  gravitation  tends,  into  any  open- 
ing that  appears.  That  is  the  attitude  of 
simple  credulity  ;  it  is  not  the  attitude  of  faith. 
No  utterly  credulous  person  can  be  a  believer. 
A  real  believer  must  have  as  one  of  the  ele- 
ments of  his  belief  the  element  of  scepticism. 
That  is,  he  must  be  an  inquirer.  He  must 
understand  the  difference  between  this  and 
that.  He  must  carefully  discriminate  in  terms 
that  make  him  sure ;  so  that,  when  he  has 
weeded  his  garden,  he  shall  enjoy  the  flowers  ; 
when  he  has  picked  off  the  defective  fruit,  the 
fruit  that  is  forming  shall  have  strength  to 
grow  ;  so  that  when  he  has  cleaned  up  his 
mind,  the  things  he  holds  to,  he  holds  to  tena- 
ciously, and  with  a  grasp  that  nothing  can 
loosen.  The  first  condition  of  believing  in  any- 
thing- is  to  be  sure  of  it.  For  that  reason  we 
claim  that  we  pre-eminently  believe  in  Christ, 
because  we  try  to  realise  what  he  was.  The 
very  first  thing  to  that  end  is  to  acquaint  one's 
self  with  the  documents  that  tell  about  his  life. 
No  man  has  any  standing  in  any  case  who 
argues  it  out  of  his  prejudices.  No  man  has 
any  right  to  expect  a  hearing  upon  any  subject 
who  does  not  know  the  elements  which  go  to 
make  it  up.  In  law,  he  has  no  standing  in 
court ;   in  philosophy,  he  has  no  standing  in 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    145 

learning  ;  in  literature,  he  is  a  mere  pot-boiler, 
as  we  say  of  the  man  who  writes  for  what  he 
can  get,  without  any  reference  to  the  facts  of 
the  case  ; — he  will  write  a  historical  novel  in 
which  if  the  characters  came  to  life  they 
would  be  utterly  lost  in  the  situations  por- 
trayed. So  with  all  the  other  conditions  of 
learning.  We  must  examine  the  facts.  We 
must  get  at  the  basis.  We  must  reason  the 
thing  down  to  the  ground.  We  must  go  back 
to  "  the  law  and  the  testimony,"  as  the  old 
phrase  is  ;  and,  examining  the  Gospels,  and  the 
Epistles  of  Paul,  and  the  other  related  docu- 
ments of  the  New  Testament,  and  the  writings 
of  the  earliest  Fathers  of  the  Church,  we  try  to 
set  Jesus  of  Nazareth  against  his  own  back- 
ground, to  put  him  in  his  own  belongings  ;  to 
make  him  not  a  Greek  philosopher,  when  he 
was  a  Jew  and  a  peasant  and  a  carpenter ;  to 
make  him  not  a  nineteenth-century  man  when 
he  belonged  to  the  first  century  ;  to  make  him 
the  thing  he  was  by  getting  at  what  we  call 
"  local  colour  "  and  the  atmosphere  of  his  human 
life.  That  is  the  first  condition,  and  the  man 
who  attempts  anything  else,  or  neglects  this 
and  then  delivers  himself  authoritatively  with 
regard  to  the  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  has  no 
standing  with  students.      He  is  talking  out  of 


146  One  World  at  a  Time 

his  prejudices.  He  is  skimming  the  top  of  his 
mind.  He  is  merely  putting  his  feelings  into 
words.  He  illustrates  what  Froude  says,  that 
"  Reason  is  no  match  for  superstition,  and  one 
great  emotion  must  be  expelled  by  another." 
So  the  only  help  for  such  a  man  is  to  have  the 
flood-tide  of  some  great  emotion  visit  him, 
and  then  he  may  perhaps  be  driven  back  to 
find  what  Jesus  really  was  in  the  records  of  the 
Gospels  and  the  history  of  the  early  Church. 
No  man  can  realise  what  Jesus  really  was  un- 
less he  discriminate  between  the  historical 
Jesus  and  the  theological  Christ.  The  atti- 
tude of  Jesus  himself  toward  the  Messiahship 
seems  to  have  changed  during  his  ministry. 
The  records  of  the  early  part  of  his  ministry 
do  not  seem  to  apply  to  the  latter  part  of  it. 
There  is  a  growing  revelation  of  what  Jesus 
thought  himself  to  be,  which  we  must  deal 
with  most  carefully,  with  discrimination  and 
most  studious  attention,  most  loving  and  affec- 
tionate reverence.  The  man  who  does  not 
do  that  simply  cannot  be  reckoned  with, — 
that  is  all.  So  the  first  business  of  believ- 
ing in  Jesus  is  to  learn  who  he  was.  This 
brings  us  at  once  into  collision  with  very  sin- 
cere people  who  do  not  think  as  we  do.  In 
the    first  place,   we  are  in    collision  with    the 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    i47 

people  who  worship  the  theological  Christ, 
but  who  will  admit,  when  questioned,  that  if 
they  had  been  present  when  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth was  on  the  earth,  and  had  attempted  to 
say  their  prayers  to  him,  with  his  Jewish  par- 
entage and  Jewish  training,  and  his  abandon 
to  the  unity  of  God  as  expressed  in  the  great 
Shema  which  he  uttered  every  day  of  his  life, 
they  would  have  been  lifted  from  their  knees, 
while  a  look  of  horror  would  have  passed  over 
his  face  to  think  they  should  have  worshipped 
him.  He  would  have  said  to  them  as  he  said 
to  the  young  man  who  came  to  him,  "  Why 
callest  thou  me  good  ?  There  is  none  good 
save  one,  that  is  God."  So  this  adherence  to  the 
theological  Christ  rather  than  to  the  historical 
Jesus  brings  us  into  collision  with  those  who 
hold  that  view.  If  you  will  run  over  the  pages 
of  an  Evangelical  hymn-book,  the  hymn-book 
used  in  the  churches  that  are  really  consistent, 
you  will  find  that  a  large  proportion  of  the 
hymns  are  addressed  to  Christ  as  prayers,  or 
adoration,  or  tributes  of  praise.  But  there  is 
not  one  of  them  that  any  early  disciple  could 
have  sung.  There  is  not  one  of  them  that  the 
Master  would  have  approved.  They  are  an 
affront  to  the  truth  for  which  he  stood,  namely, 
the  adoration  of  the  only  God,  whose  revealer 


148  One  World  at  a  Time 

he  was,  whose  interpreter  he  was,  whose  ex- 
pression in  terms  of  human  Hfe  we  thoroughly 
believe  him  to  be.  But  we  must  find  out  what 
he  is,  even  though  it  brings  us  into  collision 
with  these  sincere  people  who  hold  to  the 
essential  Deity  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  in  more 
or  less  defined  terms.  And  this  collision  is 
real.  It  is  a  point  where  we  cannot  give  up, 
by  so  much  as  the  slightest  concession,  our 
profound  belief  in  the  simple  humanity  of 
Jesus  ;  and  the  reasons  are  very  simple. 

In  the  first  place  we  have  to  take  the  Script- 
ures which  record  his  life  as  we  find  them. 
There  is  not  any  reference  to  him  except  as 
human  in  any  epistle  of  Paul,  who  seems  not 
even  to  have  known — at  least  not  to  have  re- 
membered to  state — any  story  of  his  unusual 
birth  ;  who,  it  would  have  seemed,  must  have 
mentioned  Mary  in  writing  to  the  churches 
that  he  sought  to  establish  in  the  faith  of 
Christ,  if  Mary  was  mother  of  the  Lord,  not 
only,  but  "  mother  of  God  "  as  well.  In  the 
Gospels  there  is  no  reference,  except  in 
the  isolated  passages  in  the  first  part  of 
Matthew  and  the  first  part  of  Luke  to 
Jesus  as  other  than  human.  Mark's,  which 
is  the  oldest,  as  we  have  the  Gospels,  be- 
gins with   the  baptism  by   John  the  Baptist, 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Clirist  ?    149 

and  ends  with  the  burial  of  Christ.  These 
two  passages  alone,  in  the  prefaces  to  Mat- 
thew's and  Luke's  Gospels,  of  the  whole  mass 
of  the  New  Testament,  are  the  insufficient 
supports  of  a  doctrine  that  has  spread  until  it  is 
like  an  inverted  pyramid,  standing  upon  these 
two  points  as  the  apex,  and  spreading  its  great 
base  in  the  air.  We  cannot  accept  the  view 
that  Jesus  was  other  than  simply  and  purely 
human,  for  we  think  we  know  what  he  was. 
We  ask  others  not  to  accept  our  statement, 
however,  but  to  work  their  way  back  through 
the  accumulated  debris  which  has  been  de- 
posited generation  after  generation  upon  the 
plains  of  thought ;  until,  working  their  way 
back,  or,  to  change  the  figure,  cutting  their 
way  through  the  tangled  thicket  of  opinion,  by 
any  process  known  to  them,  with  the  sharp 
cleavage  of  their  logic,  or  with  the  disengaging 
power  of  their  affection  and  sincere  devotion, 
— so  finding  their  way  back  by  any  method, 
they  discover  that  one  statement  after  another, 
as  to  how  he  was  God,  disappears,  disappears, 
disappears,  until  they  stand  face  to  face  with 
the  disciples  who  dared  rebuke  him  when  they 
thought  he  was  wrong,  and  dared  lie  upon  his 
bosomwhen  they  thought  that  hewas  in  trouble; 
who  tried  to  comfort  him  as  one  human  soul 


150  One  World  at  a  Time 

would  comfort  another  :  such  a  review  of  the 
evidence  finds  only  these  two  isolated  texts  as 
ground  for  a  faith  that  characterises  the  whole 
thinking  of  the  Evangelical  churches.  And 
why  ?  Because,  having  accepted  the  total  de- 
pravity of  man,  they  could  not  think  of  Jesus  as 
really  human.  His  character  was  too  beautiful 
to  allow  that ;  the  majesty  of  his  life  forbade 
those  to  think  meanly  of  him  as  human, — 
who  thought  meanly  of  man  because  he  was 
human.  They  accept  the  total  depravity  of 
human  nature  and  the  story  of  the  Fall  of  man, 
to  which  Jesus  never  refers  in  any  record  that 
is  left  to  us  ;  it  appears  nowhere  in  any  gospel 
in  his  words,  —  indeed,  every  utterance  of  his 
seems  to  be  a  denial  of  the  total  depravity  of 
man  or  the  Fall  of  man  from  original  purity  ; — 
having  accepted  the  total  depravity  of  man 
and  its  necessary  corollary,  the  Fall  of  man  in 
the  beginning  of  the  race,  they  needed  the 
intervention  of  a  Saviour  to  work  out  an  atone- 
ment, not  between  them  and  sin,  but  between 
them  and  God.  And  so  we  insist  it  is  the 
depth,  the  unconscious  depth  of  profanity, 
the  absolutely  blasphemous  attitude  toward 
the  great  God,  that  our  Father  should  be 
thought  to  be  one  who  needs  an  atonement  to 
reconcile  himself  to  His  children,  whom  He  has 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    151 

made,  and  in  whose  care  they  have  always 
been.  We  must  differ  with  these,  because  we 
think  we  know  what  would  have  been  the  at- 
titude of  Jesus  toward  the  Father. 

In  order  to  believe  in  Christ,  not  only  must 
we  realise  what  he  was,  but  we  must  accept 
his  leadership.  The  attitude  of  the  great 
body  of  orthodox  Christians  who  maintain 
the  Deity  of  Christ  as  against  ourselves  be- 
lieving in  his  perfect  humanity,  and  who 
charge  us  with  not  believing  in  Christ,  may  be 
expressed  as  devotion  to  a  formula  without  any 
correspondent  devotion  to  the  destiny  to  which 
that  formula  should  lead  them  in  their  thinking. 
It  is  amazing  how  many  things  are  said  that 
are  not  meant.  Often  a  very  good  man  on  his 
knees  before  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  uses  a  phrase  because  it  is  in  a  prayer- 
book,  that  his  soul  protests  against,  that  his 
mind  denies,  because,  as  he  says,  he  "  uses  it 
waiting  for  something  better  to  come  along." 
Now  the  only  way  to  get  anything  better,  if 
you  have  what  is  not  good,  is  to  go  and  get 
it  yourself.  The  man  who,  like  Micawber, 
waits  "  for  something  to  turn  up,"  is  far  below 
the  man  who  goes  and  "  turns  it  up."  The 
orthodox  position,  therefore,  upon  this  point, 
is  that  they  do  not  accept  the  leadership  of 


152  One  World  at  a  Time 

Jesus  really.  Now  I  do  not  say  that  these 
people  are  not  good  people.  When  we  say 
that  they  do  not  logically  accept  the  leader- 
ship of  Jesus,  we  do  not  mean  that.  They 
might  have  been  absolutely  good  people, 
though  they  had  never  heard  of  Jesus.  There 
are  four  and  a  half  millions  of  good  Buddhists 
who  do  not  accept  the  leadership  of  Christ. 
I  do  not  mean  to  asperse  the  characters  of 
these  people  or  their  sincerity.  I  mean  to  say 
the  habit  of  accepting  opinions  ready  made 
makes  against  the  power  of  using  one's  own 
reason.  It  is  the  assignment  of  your  own 
intellect  to  the  keeping  of  somebody  else.  In 
the  Protestant,  as  in  the  Catholic,  it  is  the 
same  thing :  The  priest  knows  a  thing ;  I 
know  the  priest ;  therefore  I  know  the  thing 
the  priest  knows.  Now  that  is  not  a  syl- 
logism. Those  three  conditions  do  not  hang 
together.  You  can  only  know  that  which  you 
have  yourself  discovered  or  had  revealed  to 
you  in  terms  your  consciousness  approves,  or 
that  you  have  experienced  in  the  contact  with 
human  life.  Those  are  the  only  three  ways 
of  knowing  anything.  You  must  have  known 
it  by  your  experience,  or  must  have  accepted 
it  in  your  consciousness,  or  must  have  dis- 
covered and  verified  it  for  yourself.     That  is 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    153 

not  the  attitude  of  those  who  hold  to  the  leader- 
ship of  Jesus  as  a  formula. 

Now  what  is  leadership  in  this  sense?  It 
means  we  must  adjust  ourselves  to  the  life  of 
Christ  so  as  to  get  his  view  of  God.  That  is 
the  first  thing.  If  nothing  in  your  religious 
experience  were  gained  except  a  view  of  God, 
that  would  in  itself  be  sufficient  for  the  forma- 
tion of  character  and  the  direction  of  life  ;  and 
the  use  of  Jesus,  as  we  apprehend  him,  is  to 
be  a  revealer  of  God  to  us  in  terms  of  human 
life.  I  do  not  want  God  revealed  to  me  in 
terms  of  angelic  life.  I  do  not  want  Him  re- 
vealed to  me  in  terms  of  brute  life.  If  the 
brute  has  any  consciousness  of  the  Ultimate 
Cause,  to  the  bull  God  is  a  bull ;  to  the  lion 
God  is  a  lion  ;  to  the  eagle  God  is  an  eagle. 
But  I  am  a  man  and  I  want  to  know  what 
God  is  like  in  terms  of  human  life.  I  can 
only  know  that  by  finding  some  life  that  is 
stirred  with  the  sense  of  God;  so  "brought 
Into  moral  coalescence,  the  human  with  the 
divine,"  in  its  relation  to  God,  that  it  becomes 
to  me  the  lens  through  which  I  look,  by  which 
the  whole  atmosphere  is  cleared  and  the  stars 
are  brought  near,  as  the  sidereal  universe 
through  the  telescope  becomes  as  though  it 
were  near  and  familiar.     That  Jesus  of  Naza- 


154  One  World  at  a  Time 

reth  does  for  the  believer  who  accepts  his 
humanity.  We  try  to  get  his  view  of  God, 
which  is  a  great  deal  better  than  getting  a 
view  of  him  and  stopping  there.  That  is 
what  most  people  do.  They  come  up  to 
Christ,  look  in  his  face,  picture  his  beauty  to 
their  imagination,  idealise  him  to  their  senti- 
ment, worship  before  him,  and  forget  utterly 
that  he  said,  "  I  am  the  Way."  But  a  way 
points  some-whither  ;  it  leads  somewhere  ;  "  I 
am  the  Truth."  The  truth  is  the  expression 
of  an  ultimate  reality ;  "  I  am  the  Life,"  said 
he.  Life  was  not  self-existent  in  him.  He 
was  born  into  the  world  as  we  are  born  into 
the  world.  But,  "  I  am  the  Life,"  proceeding 
from  the  Final  Life  of  all.  "  No  man,"  said 
he  "  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  me."  His 
whole  teaching  in  that,  as  in  every  other  case, 
is  that  he  is  a  means  to  an  end,  that  end,  the 
Father ;  an  approximate  to  an  ultimate,  that 
Ultimate  the  Father.  Our  effort  is  to  climb 
where  he  stands  and  see  what  he  sees  ;  that  is 
believing  in  him.  No  mountain  climber  ever 
yet  climbed  the  Alps  to  any  accessible  height, 
where  the  guide  had  not  gone  before,  or  did 
not  know  the  way  ;  and  when  he  climbed, 
tied  to  his  guide,  the  same  rope  around  his 
waist   and    around    the    guide's    waist ; —  and 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    155 

when  he  reached  the  beethncj  diffs  to  which 
he  had  chmbed,  and  stood,  perhaps,  on  top 
of  the  Matterhorn,  or  some  great  peak  of 
Switzerland,  he  drew  in  his  delight  in  panting, 
short  breaths ;  but  he  did  not  stand  looking 
at  the  guide.  He  gioj^ied  in  the  guide's 
strength ;  he  rejoiced  in  the  guide's  skill ;  he 
had  followed  in  the  guide's  footsteps ;  but 
he  tried  to  see  what  the  guide  saw.  That  is 
our  attitude  ;  that  is  belief  in  Christ, — to  get 
his  view  of  God,  and  of  life,  and  of  human 
destiny.  That  is  what  we  mean  by  saying 
that  our  business  is  "  to  discover  the  secret  of 
Jesus."  It  is  better  than  mere  imitation, 
which  is  mechanical.  It  is  trying  to  live  the 
life  he  lived,  in  the  terms  of  your  life,  which 
is  a  great  deal  better  than  living  his  life 
over  again.  At  school  you  were  told  to  write 
the  thing  you  knew  ;  to  make  your  composi- 
tion out  of  something  that  you  really  under- 
stood; to  say  the  thing  that  was  in  your  mind. 
How  unsatisfactory  it  would  have  been,  and 
how  deadening  to  all  your  future  knowledge 
of  English  literature  or  interest  in  English, 
if  you  had  simply  carried  into  the  class-room 
time  after  time  something  you  had  copied  out 
of  some  master  of  English  style !  You  would 
have  imitated  the  style  but  lost  the  power  to 


156  One  World  at  a  Time 

think  in  English.  Our  attitude  is  to  find 
"the  secret  of  Jesus,"  and  to  live  his  life  over 
ao-ain  in  terms  of  our  own  life. 

Most  of  all,  I  think  this  criticism  that  we 
do  not  believe  in  Christ  is  offered  to  us  be- 
cause of  our  refusal,  as  I  have  already  said, 
of  any  theory  of  the  atonement.  But  I 
assure  you  that  there  is  no  theory  now  ac- 
cepted as  applying  to  the  atonement  which 
existed  for  the  first  nine  hundred  years  of  the 
Christian  Church.  The  people  in  the  pews 
are  not  expected  to  be  experts  in  Church 
history ;  but  no  minister  in  our  faith  can 
afford  not  to  be.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
any  well-equipped  Unitarian  minister  has  to 
know  the  first  three  centuries  better  than 
the  last  three,  if  he  is  going  to  vindicate 
what  he  thinks  about  the  early  Church  ;  and 
I  say  with  perfect  frankness,  and  ask  you 
to  verify  it,  that  no  "  mercantile "  theory, 
nor  "  moral  influence  "  theory,  nor  any  one 
of  the  remaining  twenty  or  more  theories  of 
the  atonement  as  known  in  the  early  Church 
until  after  the  ninth  century.  The  theory  of 
the  early  Church  after  the  second  century  and 
until  the  time  of  Anselm  and  Abelard,  with 
their  contending  theories,  was  that  this  earth 
had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  malign  power 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    157 

called  Lucifer,  Satan,  the  devil,  the  adversary, — 
that  he  was  "  the  prince  of  this  world  "  ;  that 
there  must  be  some  provision  made  for  get- 
ting it  away  from  him  ;  God  had  lost  control 
of  part  of  His  estate  ;  part  of  it  had  been  "  sold 
for  taxes,"  as  we  would  say,  and  had  passed 
into  the  possession  of  another  being  called 
the  devil.  And  Christ,  in  the  councils  of 
heaven,  after  the  manner  of  the  old  Roman 
Horatii,  stepped  forward,  or  as  David  before 
Goliath,  and  offered  to  do  battle  for  man 
and  overthrow  the  enemy  ;  and  Jesus  being 
put  to  death,  the  bodily  nature  of  Christ 
perished  ;  but  that  was  only  the  vindication 
of  his  power  as  divine.  In  other  words,  as 
one  of  the  old  preachers  of  that  time  said  : 
"  God  angled  for  the  devil  with  the  bait  of 
Christ,  and  the  devil  did  not  know  it  had 
a  hook  in  it."  The  hook  was  the  Deity  of 
Christ.  It  impaled  the  jaws  of  him  who  had 
overthrown  the  humanity  of  Christ.  There 
is  no  human  being  in  the  world  now  who 
believes  that,  and  yet  for  eight  hundred  years 
the  Christian  Church  as  a  whole  believed  some 
such  theory.  Then  came  the  theories  of 
Anselm  and  Abelard,  followed  by  one  theory 
after  another,  until  Horace  Bushnell  in  the 
middle  of  the  last  century  taught  the  "moral 


15S  One  World  at  a  Time 

influence "  theory ;  that  is,  that  the  sinner 
comes  to  Christ,  for  whose  sake  Christ  dies, 
and  the  sinner  is  broken-hearted  by  the  sight 
of  what  sin  has  cost,  and  turns  to  God  because 
sin  is  overthrown  by  the  vision  of  the  suffer- 
ing Messiah.  Then  they  said,  who  beheved 
the  other  views,  that  Horace  Bushnell  did  not 
beHeve  in  Christ.  That  is  an  easy  charge ; 
and  is  as  irrelevant  as  it  is  slanderous.  The 
view  held  by  Bushnell  is  now  held  by  thou- 
sands who  call  themselves  orthodox — and  en- 
tertain toward  those  who  differ  with  them 
the  same  critical  attitude  from  which  Bushnell 
suffered. 

Finally,  we  try  to  think  what  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth would  like  us  to  do.  We  do  not  simply 
ask  what  would  he  like  us  to  be.  I  think 
what  he  would  like  us  to  be  is  to  be  our 
best  selves,  enlightened  by  his  example,  in- 
spired by  his  spirit.  He  would  like  us  to 
be  our  best  selves  ;  but  what  would  he  like 
us  to  do  ?  When  the  Unitarian  leaders  of 
the  last  century  answered  that  question,  Doro- 
thea Dix  liberated  the  insane  from  their 
chains,  and  turned  the  madhouse  from  a 
place  of  torture  into  a  place  of  healing. 
When  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Charles  Sumner 
and  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  and  the  others 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    159 

of  our  faith  in  the  anti-slavery  contest,  together 
with  the  good  Quaker  Whittier,  who  himself 
was  a  believer  in  the  humanity  of  Jesus,  asked 
what  Christ  would  have  them  to  do  about 
the  slave,  they  contended  for  his  freedom  even 
to  intemperance  of  utterance  and  action.  John 
Brown's  ill-considered  raid  was  the  very  ex- 
pression of  what  he  thought  Christ  would 
have  him  to  do.  The  Abolition  Party  of  the 
North  all  asked  just  one  question,  "  What 
would  Jesus  of  Nazareth  have  me  do  ?"  And 
four  to  six  millions  of  people  were  freed, 
because  the  nation  arose  and  answered  that 
question.  There  were  very  good  people  on 
the  other  side  of  the  question.  They  said  : 
"  What  does  the  Old  Testament  teach  about 
slavery  ?  Did  not  Abraham  have  slaves  ? 
Did  not  David,  who  was  '  after  God's  own 
heart,'  have  slaves  ?  Did  not  the  whole  of 
the  Old  Testament  recognise  slavery  ?  "  They 
refused  to  add  concubinage  and  polygamy 
and  gambling  and  all  the  other  evils  that 
were  practised  in  the  twilight  times  of  the 
Old  Testament.  They  forgot  to  ask  whether 
it  was  "  a  square  deal,"  as  we  would  say  now, 
between  Esau  and  Jacob  as  to  the  birthright. 
They  only  said,  "  What  did  the  Old  Testament 
allow  as  to  slavery  ?"     It  was  a  very  different 


i6o  One  World  at  a  Time 

question  from  asking,  "  What  would  Jesus 
have  me  to  do  about  slavery  ? "  So  this 
country  has  been  made  over  by  people  who 
have  asked  themselves  that  question  ;  and  in 
the  answering  of  the  race-question,  the  leaders 
have  been  Unitarians.  I  offer  you  this  as  my 
challenge, — to  say  whether  the  great  propor- 
tion of  those  who  have  been  moved  by  that 
motive,  and  regulated  in  the  method  of  their 
thinking  by  that  motive,  were  not  believers 
in  Christ.  The  race-question  which  now 
convulses  the  South  would  be  settled  if 
the  faith  of  the  Unitarian  Churches  prevailed 
there. 

I  desire  in  one  single  word  to  say  that 
to  believe  in  Christ  is  to  repeat  his  life, 
not  in  words,  but  to  repeat  his  life  in 
terms  of  life.  There  is  many  a  thing  that  he 
said  that  you  have  to  take  with  a  difference. 
As  Lecky  shows  in  The  Map  of  Life,  you 
cannot  put  up  over  any  savings-bank  the  in- 
junction, "  Take  no  thought  for  the  morrow." 
You  cannot  bring  into  any  court  of  justice  the 
statement,  "If  a  man  take  thy  coat,  give  him 
thy  cloak  also."  All  these,  that  are  the  nat- 
ural utterances  of  his  time,  have  to  be  ad- 
justed to  the  really  higher  ethics  of  this  time. 
Believing  in   Christ    is    repeating   his  life    in 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    i6i 

terms  of  our  life ;  to  indulge  in  a  heresy 
hunt  because  somebody  does  not  believe  in 
Christ,  illustrates  what  was  said  in  a  recent 
theological  controversy,  "  It  was  like  a  battle 
of  two  dogs  in  a  flower-garden,  that  settled 
nothing  but  the  flowers,"  That  is  what  al- 
ways happens.  The  beautiful  things  perish  in 
the  time  of  controversy  ;  and  there  is  nothing 
so  true  as  to  the  charge  that  we  do  not  believe 
in  Christ,  when  it  is  followed  up  by  the  as- 
perity on  either  side  which  that  charge  pro- 
vokes, as  the  complaint  that  "  he  is  wounded 
in  the  house  of  his  friends." 

The  following  poem  by  Arthur  Munby  has 
come  under  my  notice  in  the  Spectator  as  I 
close  this  chapter  ;  and  it  so  well  phrases  what 
I  have  been  claiming  for  faith  in  Christ  that  I 
add  its  strong  appeal  to  my  own  plea. 

CHRISTUS  CUNCTATOR 

So  far  beyond  the  things  of  Space — 
So  high  above  the  things  of  Time — 

And  yet,  how  human  is  thy  face, 

How  near,  how  neighbourly,  thy  clime  ! 

Thou  wast  not  born  to  fill  our  skies 
With  lustre  from  some  alien  zone  : 

Thy  light,  thy  love,  thy  sympathies, 
Thy  very  essence,  are  our  own. 


1 62  One  World  at  a  Time 

Thy  mission,  thy  supreme  estate, 

Thy  life  among  the  pious  poor. 
Thy  lofty  language  to  the  great  ; 

Thy  touch,  so  tender  and  so  sure  ; 

Thine  eyes,  whose  looks  are  with  us  yet ; 

Thy  voice,  whose  echoes  do  not  die  ; 
Thy  words,  which  none  who  hear  forget, 

So  piercing  are  they  and  so  nigh  ; 

Thy  balanced  nature,  always  true 
And  always  dauntless  and  serene, 

Which  did  the  deeds  none  else  could  do, 
And  saw  the  sights  none  else  had  seen, 

And  ruled  itself  from  first  to  last 

Without  an  effort  or  a  pause. 
By  no  traditions  of  the  Past — 

By  nothing,  save  its  own  pure  laws  ; 

All  this,  and  thousand  traits  beside. 
Unseen  till  these  at  least  are  known, 

May  serve  to  witness  far  and  wide 
That  thou  art  he,  and  thou  alone. 

But  oh,  how  high  thy  spirit  soars 
Above  the  men  who  tell  thy  tale  ! 

They  labour  with  their  awkward  oars 
And  try  to  show  thee — and  they  fail. 

They  saw  thee  ;  yet  they  fail  like  us 
Who  also  strive  to  limn  thee  out, 

And  say  that  thou  art  thus  or  thus, 

And  carve  our  crumbling  creeds  with  Doubt; 


What  is  it  to  Believe  in  Christ?    i6 

Or  build  them  up  with  such  a  Faith 
And  such  a  narrow,  niggard  Love 

As  clings  to  what  some  other  saith, 
Or  moves  not,  lest  some  other  move. 

Ah,  none  shall  see  thee  as  thou  art, 

Or  know  thee  for  himself  at  all. 
Until  he  has  thee  in  his  heart, 

And  heeds  thy  whisper  or  thy  call, 

And  feels  that  in  thy  sovran  will 

Eternal  manhood  grows  not  old. 
But  keeps  its  prime,  that  all  may  fill 

Thy  large,  illimitable  fold. 


o 


CHAPTER    VII 

"A   COLD   AND   INTELLECTUAL 
RELIGION" 

{SUPPOSE  there  is  nothing  about  which 
people  so  differ  as  the  weather.  Some 
people  like  a  dull  day,  because  they  enjoy 
their  own  melancholy  ;  and  others  almost 
dread  a  radiant  day  because  it  makes  them 
restless  and  long  for  the  woods  and  "  God's 
good  outdoors  "  ;  and  between  these  how  great 
a  multitude  of  those  who,  when  they  wish  to 
know  whether  it  is  cold,  consult  the  thermo- 
meter, and  whether  it  will  rain,  inspect  the 
barometer.  In  the  same  room  it  often  hap- 
pens that  one  will  say,  "  It  seems  to  me  dry 
and  hot,  so  that  I  can  scarcely  breathe  "  ;  whilst 
the  person  addressed  will  say,  "  I  have  a  con- 
stant feeling  of  cold  at  the  back  of  my  arms, 
— a  little  shiver  somewhere  about  the  spine." 
I  use  this  parable  of  the  weather  to  point  the 
fact,  that  when,  in  the  contemplation  of  religion, 
a  critic  says  it  is  cold,  the  simplest  answer  is, 

164 


"  A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion  "       165 

that  all  questions  of  cold  and  heat  are  referable 
always  to  the  temperature  of  the  complainant. 
It  is  cold  to  him  who  is  cold,  and  it  is  warm  to 
him  who  is  warm ;  and  there  is  no  settling  the 
fact  by  the  barometer  or  thermometer  or  any 
scientific  registry  of  facts  ;  there  is  no  settling 
the  question  of  comfort  except  by  the  circula- 
tion of  the  comfortable. 

Now,  we  Unitarians  are  quite  comfortable. 
We  are  called  complacent,  self-satisfied.  Let 
us  thank  God  there  is  a  complacency  possible 
in  God's  good  world,  which  God  has  so  divinely 
ordered  and  so  supremely  and  infinitely  ad- 
ministers. It  would  be  unwholesome  if  human 
beines  in  God's  world  were  so  sin-ridden  or 
sorrow-laden  that  they  could  never  be  quiet  in 
spirit,  nor  complacent ;  but  to  be  self-satisfied 
is  quite  another  matter ;  and  no  human  being 
can  tell  that  another  human  being  is  self-satis- 
fied without  being  that  very  self,  because  quiet 
of  the  external  manner  may  very  well  be  a 
mask  to  hide  inward  convulsion.  We  wear  our 
masks  not  only  for  protection  but  for  decency's 
sake  ;  and  it  is  well  that  the  world  shall  get 
the  idea  in  good  company  that  people  are 
satisfied  enough  not  to  make  others  dissatisfied. 
A  Japanese,  who  is  the  very  perfection  of  good- 
breeding,  will  smile  while  he  tells  you  of  the 


1 66  One  World  at  a  Time 

death  of  someone  near  to  him, — not  because 
death  is  not  the  same  thing  in  Japan  where  peo- 
ple love  as  in  America  where  people  love,  but 
because  the  idea  has  been  Ingrained  through 
generations  that  It  is  the  business  of  life  to 
make  life  easy  for  the  other,  and  that  we  have 
no  right  to  load  our  burdens,  even  for  our  own 
relief,  on  other  souls.  It  Is  the  high  prerog- 
ative of  souls  to  take  burdens  from  others,  but 
it  is  not  ours  to  give  them.  So  that  In  the  last 
analysis  we  say  that  the  question  of  whether  it 
is  cold  or  not  is  a  question  of  the  temperature 
of  the  complainant,  and  there  is  no  way  of 
making  the  constantly  chilly  soul  warm  by 
any  external  pressure  or  kindling  from  the 
outside. 

My  answer  to  those  who  are  critics  of  our 
faith,  who  say  It  Is  a  cold  religion,  Is  that  you 
must  carry  your  own  coals.  If  I  am  going 
Into  an  arctic  region  I  will  see  to  It  that  pro- 
vision Is  made  for  fuel  which  Is  heat  producing. 
I  venture  Into  the  arctic  cold,  but  I  would  not 
venture  unprovided.  So  that  to  anyone  who 
says  an  Unitarian  Church  Is  a  cold  place — the 
simple  answer  Is  that  It  Is  cold  to  you.  Those 
who  are  accustomed  to  the  atmosphere  need 
no  artificial  protection  ;  their  circulation — the 
intensity  of  their  own  feeling — warms  them ; 


''  A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion  "      167 

and  you    must   bring  your  own  coals  if  you 
would  come. 

Take  a  step  farther.  To  the  complaint  that 
it  is  a  cold  and  an  intellectual  religion  let  me 
answer  that  the  emotions  are  not  the  test  of 
reality.  We  do  reach  God  by  the  affections 
and  not  by  the  intellect :  there  is  no  question 
but  that  the  path  to  the  Infinite  is  through  the 
affections  and  not  through  any  speculative 
faculty  whatever  ;  but  the  affections  are  not  the 
emotions.  The  emotions  bloom  upon  the  root 
and  stalk  of  the  affections  ;  but  it  is  not  the 
flower  that  is  the  thing ;  it  is  the  bloom  of  the 
thinof  itself  that  is  the  emotion ;  and  affection 
is  not  judged  by  its  flowering  ;  it  is  judged  by 
its  constancy  and  the  power  of  self-sacrifice 
that  is  in  it ;  and  to  the  gay  and  jocund  nature 
it  may  be  quite  possible  that  there  is  no  depth 
and  power  of  loyalty  whatever.  It  does  not 
follow  that  this  is  so  ;  but  it  may  be  so.  That 
for  which  men  go  to  the  stake, — whether  it  be 
the  quick  incineration  of  some  martyr  fire,  or 
the  slow  burning  away  of  life  under  some  per- 
petual sorrow  for  love's  sake, — that  which  takes 
them  to  such  martyrdom,  is  no  mere  quick  and 
sudden  overflow  of  emotion,  but  the  alliance 
of  the  soul  unto  reality,  for  which  it  must  die, 
whether  by  slow  torture  or  quick  fire  ;  whether 


1 68  One  World  at  a  Time 

in  the  tragedy  that  has  no  record,  or  in  the 
martyrdom  that  writes  the  page  of  history  ;  it 
is  the  consciousness  of  alHance  with  the  real 
and  eternal,  and  this  cannot  be  made  depend- 
ent upon  any  day's  emotion. 

I  do  not  decry  emotion  in  religion.  If  it 
were  not  for  emotion  we  would  have  few 
prayers  and  no  hymns.  All  hymns  are  born 
of  spiritual  emotion,  and  prayers  are  wafted 
upon  the  aspiration  of  the  soul's  outbreathing. 
Its  inspiration  comes  to  it  and  it  breathes 
again  unto  high  Heaven  the  thing  which  has 
been  inspired  in  it.  But  when  all  has  been 
said  and  done,  in  religion  as  in  life  it  is  reality 
that  counts;  it  is  constancy  that  is  dependable; 
it  is  the  marriage  of  the  soul  to  an  abiding 
principle  that  remains.  We  reach  God  by  the 
affections  :  it  is  not  possible  that  any  religion 
could  be  purely  intellectual. 

Now  if  you  will  recall  for  one  moment  the 
reaction  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  you 
will  realise  that  it  was  a  reaction  violent  in 
feeling  and  in  method  ;  its  reverberation  has 
been  in  the  Dissenting  churches  ever  since  ;  it 
has  set  a  kind  of  tone  ;  it  has  been  a  drum- 
beat, a  rally,  a  bugle-call,  a  championship  to 
enter  the  lists  against  the  foe.  But  it  has  no 
more  value  as  the  expression  of  fact  than  the 


''  A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion  "       169 

great  musical  history  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  The  music  is  built  upon  the  aestheti- 
cism  of  human  life,  and  is  a  legitimate  con- 
tribution to  it.  It  was  born  of  it,  bred  in  it, 
returned  to  it  as  a  contribution  to  the  aesthetic 
in  human  life ;  and  the  Protestant  revival, 
whether  in  the  Church  of  England,  in  the  Ger- 
man Reformation,  or  in  the  sturdy  contribution 
of  Methodism  in  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England, —  when  it  in  turn  floated  upon  the 
tides  of  emotion  a  higher  life  than  that  which 
the  English  Church  knew, —  no  matter  from 
what  source  it  comes,  nor  to  what  end  it 
moves,  it  is,  so  far  as  its  emotion  is  concerned, 
but  an  incident;  it  is  not  the  very  thing 
itself. 

In  the  last  and  final  statement,  Religion 
has  this  for  its  guarantee,  in  the  words 
of  Martineau,  that  "  for  all  time  the  differ- 
ence must  be  infinite  between  the  partisan 
of  beliefs  and  the  man  whose  heart  is  set 
upon  reality."  In  the  man  whose  heart 
is  set  upon  reality  you  have  the  registry 
of  fewer  emotions,  but  when  all  the  efferv- 
escence has  subsided,  when  all  the  quick 
breath  of  adulation  and  praise  and  adoration 
has  gone  by,  he  shall  be  found  abiding,  as 
one  who  has  found   "  the  shadow  of  a  ereat 


I70  One  World  at  a  Time 

rock  in  a  weary  land"  ;  his  "heart  is  set  upon 
reality." 

I  come  back  for  a  moment  to  consider  the 
statement  that  religion  cannot  be  purely  in- 
tellectual, for  the  reason  that  it  must  be 
thoroughly  rational.  Now,  rationalism  in  re- 
ligion, which  so  many  people  dread,  includes 
the  speculative  faculty,  which  is  the  instru- 
ment of  inquiry;  includes  the  faculty  of  the 
critic  which  is  the  discriminating  faculty ;  in- 
cludes great  affection,  which  is  the  conserving 
faculty.  To  be  wholly  rational  a  man  must 
be  clear ;  but  to  say  that  religion  is  purely  in- 
tellectual— meaning  that  it  dwells  in  the  upper 
chambers  and  clear  air  of  speculative  beliefs  — 
is  not  to  state  what  can  be  true  of  religion  as 
a  whole.  If  that  objection  were  well  taken, 
it  would  be  our  condemnation.  We  do  claim 
that  reason  is  the  great  final  appeal ;  but  by 
reason  we  mean  the  whole  man.  He  is  a 
rational  being-  who  "  looks  before  and 
after  "  ;  whose  "  roots  are  in  the  soil  and  whose 
head  is  in  the  sun  "  ;  who  has  reasons  for  his 
action,  motives  for  his  behaviour ;  whose  affec- 
tions are  the  root  of  his  principles  and  whose 
principles  are  the  regulation  of  his  affections, 
the  one  the  sanctification  of  the  other.  Re- 
ligion has  to  do  with    the  whole    man  ;    and 


"A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion"      i;^ 

religion  must  be  rational  or  else  it  is  super- 
stition ;  and  so  far  as  it  lacks  rationality  it 
partakes  of  the  superstitious. 

We  are  set  against  all  superstition.  But 
we  examine  the  myth  and  miracle  as  we 
examine  the  fact ;  for  the  myth  is  as  legiti- 
mate,— a  flower  growing  upon  a  fruitful  stem, 
and  the  miracle  as  legitimate, — a  fruit  growing 
in  a  credulous  age, — as  any  fact  that  history 
reveals ;  and  the  myth  and  the  miracle  are 
part  of  the  poetry  of  religion  ;  for  there  is  a 
poetic  interpretation  of  religion  which  is  as 
legitimate  as  its  facts. 

Religion  is  not  a  matter  of  statistics.  You 
cannot  sum  up  its  effects  by  the  number  of 
"  souls  saved."  That  is  a  curious  phrase  in  the 
Book  of  Acts,  which  records  that  in  one  day 
three  thousand,  and  on  another  day  five  thou- 
sand, proclaimed  themselves  disciples  of  Jesus  ; 
the  record  reads,  "  And  the  Lord  added  to  the 
Church  daily  those  who  should  be  saved!'  It 
is  a  question  of  character,  fitness,  and  adjust- 
ment, "who  shoidd  be  saved";  the  potential 
mood  coming  in  there  is  the  interpretation  of 
the  idea.  So  that  when  we  contemplate  a  re- 
vival of  religion  we  never  fail  to  welcome  it, 
but  when  it  is  over  we  wonder  what  will  be 
left. 


172  One  World  at  a  Time 

Horace  Bushnell  pointed  out  to  the  Con- 
gregationalism of  his  day,  that  "  Christian 
nurture "  is  the  prime  consideration  in  the 
Christian  life.  It  is  one  thino-  to  be  born  into 
the  world,  and  it  is  another  thing  to  be  well 
nursed  to  self-supporting  life.  I  should  say, 
that  however  many  souls  may  be  borne  into 
the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  some  tide  of  emo- 
tion, you  can  only  know  what  has  lasted,  re- 
mained, by  the  achievements  of  those  who 
have  constantly,  steadily,  loyally  worked  to 
bring  in  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  their  turn. 
Many  a  revival  of  religion  has  left  the  shore- 
line strewed  with  the  exhausted  souls  of  peo- 
ple whose  whole  psychical  nature  has  been 
involved  in  some  tempest  of  emotion  ;  it  may 
be  magnetism,  or  some  mere  phase  of  the 
multiform  psychic  development  of  which  we 
know  so  little  ;  but  it  can  be  as  surely  produced 
by  artificial  means  as  it  can  be  perceived 
when  it  is  natural.  This  tide  of  emotional 
and  psychic  sentiment  is  not  to  be  deplored 
any  more  than  it  is  to  be  sought.  He  who 
seeks  it  is  to  be  deplored  ;  but  he  who  de- 
plores it  knows  not  all  of  the  human  soul. 

But  religion  in  its  last  analysis  must  be 
rational ;  that  is,  it  must  be  made  up  of  these 
constituents  :    there    must    be    an    awakened 


**  A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion  "      173 

soul  to  which  it  comes  ;  it  must  be  an  alert 
spiritual  nature  which  participates  in  it,  and 
that  spiritual  nature  must  involve  the  whole 
man  from  top  to  toe,  —  from  the  highlands  of 
his  nature  down  to  the  very  basilar  instincts  ; 
the  whole  man  is  involved.  It  is  not  given  to 
us  simply  to  feel  deeply,  but  to  think  clearly 
on  the  thought  side  of  religion.  It  has  been 
well  said  by  one  of  our  thoughtful  people  : 
"  There  are  certain  natures  upon  whom  the 
destiny  has  fallen  of  deep  feeling  and  high 
thinking ;  and  there  is  no  rescue  for  them  but 
in  deeper  feeling  and  in  higher  thinking." 
Many  elements  are  involved  in  religion :  a 
basis  of  relief,  which  is  intellectual  apprehen- 
sion ;  a  principle  of  action,  which  is  the  motive 
of  conduct  ;  and  adjustment  of  the  affections, 
which  is  the  unfailing  source  of  devotion  both 
toward  God  and  man.  To  the  soul  intent 
upon  the  religious  life  there  must  be  a  strug- 
gle to  attain  these.  There  are  some,  how- 
ever, who  grow  weary  of  the  struggle  ;  they 
fall  supine  upon  some  ready-made  profession 
of  faith  and  say  that  the  Unitarian  churches  are 
cold  and  purely  intellectual  places ;  they  have 
not  proved  their  criticism  true ;  they  have 
only  registered  the  fact  that  they  are  tired 
because  they  are  not  strong, — that  is  all ;  and 


174  One  World  at  a  Time 

they  belong  in  some  of  the  hospital  sects 
which  take  care  of  tired  people  who  are  not 
very  strong.  I  should  say  without  the  slightest 
hesitancy  to  such  people,  "  You  belong  here, 
and  here,"  and  point  them,  as  far  as  my  advice 
would  go,  to  the  place  to  which  they  should  go. 
If  a  man  in  any  congregation  belonging  to 
the  Unitarian  faith  were  to  fall  into  that  re- 
laxed intellectual  state  in  which  he  should  say 
to  me,  "  I  must  have  authority,  some  man's 
statement  for  the  final  fact "  ;  if  I  were  con- 
vinced that  that  claim  was  grounded  in  the 
necessity  of  his  nature,  and  that  there  was  no 
resource  for  him  in  independent  and  rational 
life,  I  would  commend  him  at  once  to  en- 
roll himself  somewhere  in  the  multitude  of 
churches  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  be- 
cause there,  at  least,  he  would  get  authority 
that  has  fifteen  hundred  years  back  of  it, — 
not  always  preserving  the  continuity  of  his- 
tory, not  always  adorned  by  beauty  of  life, 
but  sometimes  sanctified  and  purified  by  the 
most  celestial  experience  the  world  has  ever 
known  ;  but  it  is  the  radical  distinction  be- 
tween such  a  Church  and  the  Unitarian  faith 
that  the  one  is  based  upon  authority,  and  the 
other  stands  unabashed  before  the  tribunal 
of  reason.      There  are  people  who   must  be 


"  A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion  "      175 

Roman  Catholics  by  the  structure  of  their  very 
spines, — they  must  be  adherents  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  ;  they  do  not  stand  for  any- 
thing —  they  adhere  to  something  ;  just  as 
there  are  people  who  must  be  Quakers,  to 
whom  all  symbolism  is  an  horror  ;  to  whom  all 
ritual  is  an  offence ;  for  whom  "  the  inner 
light  "  alone  shines  ;  and  its  radiance  from  that 
central  place  of  power  of  the  human  soul 
shines  daily  upon  every  act  of  life  ;  they  must 
belong  to  the  Society  of  Friends.  And  if 
some  young  girl  or  lad  should  say  of  the  So- 
ciety of  Friends  that  it  was  cold  or  formal  in 
its  beliefs,  that  they  must  go  to  some  em- 
broidered ritual,  to  some  modern  phantasm  of 
religion, —  they  must  believe  in  some  painted 
hell  of  which  they  might  be  afraid,  some 
mythical  heaven  before  which  they  might 
prostrate  themselves  in  imaginative  delight, — 
saying  this  they  simply  show  that  the  faith  of 
their  fathers  and  mothers  has  not  yet  been 
awakened  by  spiritual  experience  in  their 
lives ;  and  they  are  like  the  people  who  would 
say,  on  the  one  hand,  "  We  must  be  clothed  " 
(yes,  for  warmth  and  decency),  and,  on  the 
other,  "  What  is  the  latest  fashion  in  clothes  ?  " 
(That  has  nothing  to  do  with  warmth  and  de- 
cency).    Such  claims  in  the  name  of  religion 


176  One  World  at  a  Time 

are  on  the  mere  fringe  of  the  mind ;  it  is 
not  even  an  emotion  ;  it  is  the  sHght  scum 
that  rises  upon  the  pool  of  thought,  and  may 
be  skimmed  off,  and  may  every  season  form 
again  according  to  the  fashion  of  the  time. 
That  is  neither  thought  nor  feeling  ;  that  is 
simply  vapid  and  inane  trifling  with  Eternal 
Verities. 

Let  me  call  attention  to  a  consideration 
that  must  never  be  lost  sight  of.  What  is 
the  object  of  religion  ?  I  have  no  hesit- 
ancy in  saying  that  it  is  the  formation  of 
character.  If  it  does  that,  it  is  good  so  far  as 
that  is  done.  If  it  does  anything  else,  not 
doing  that,  it  is  evil.  If  the  Roman  Catholic 
faith  saps  the  foundations  of  reason  it  is  so 
far  evil  ;  for  it  produces  the  saintly  character 
in  perhaps  the  most  useless  form  of  life  that 
the  world  has  ever  undertaken  to  follow, — the 
monk,  who  sits  in  his  monastery,  and  the  nun 
who  fades  out  in  her  cloister.  Still,  the  Cath- 
olic faith  produces  often  the  sublimest  type  of 
spiritual  devotion, —  the  sublimated  character. 
If  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  for  in- 
stance (since  I  must  be  specific  in  these  il- 
lustrations), gathers  to  itself  for  prayer  by 
quotation  those  who  can  never  pray  for  them- 
selves,   the    people   who    like    to    have    their 


**A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion"      177 

religious  services  mapped  out  for  them, — there 
is  nothing  to  say  but  that  they  are  that  kind 
of  people;  but  the  test  still  remains, — does 
character  result  ?  Many  a  time,  yes  ;  because 
many  a  diffident  soul  in  this  world,  meaning 
some  time  to  go  upon  some  errand  of  love,  to 
find  his  mate,  has  been  encouraged  by  reading 
the  love-passages  of  other  biographers,  and 
has  learned  the  habit  of  the  lover's  mind  from 
the  printed  page,  regulating  his  instincts  and 
adjusting  his  emotions  by  what  has  been 
proved  lovable  and  adorable.  It  is  true,  but 
it  is  remote  :  it  seems  rather  a  playing  at 
love  ;  a  childish  make-believe  which  the  grand 
passion  of  life  shall  sweep  away  when  it  floods 
the  soul. 

I  do  not  wish  to  say  one  word  depreciatory 
of  any  faith  that  makes  character.  I  do  not 
care  how  it  is  made,  of  what  stuff  it  is  made, 
how  long  it  takes,  what  sorrows  it  involves, 
what  joys  it  insures,  what  high-hearted  hope 
it  engenders,  what  great,  black  despair  the 
soul  passes  through  in  the  process,  if  in  the 
end  character  be  formed,  of  which  the  tests 
are  three  :  First,  how  does  a  man  feel  when 
he  is  livinor  with  himself  ?  Second,  how  does 
anybody  feel  who  is  living  with  him  ?  Third, 
what  place  does  he  take  in  the  social  order, 


178  One  World  at  a  lime 

and  how  bear  his  share  of  the  social  respons- 
ibility ?  The  religion  which  does  that  well, 
and  in  the  ratio  in  which  it  does  it,  is  the 
religion  for  that  man,  whatever  it  may  be  for 
the  next ;  for  all  forms  of  faith  are 

"  .     .     ,     but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 
And  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 

A  single  suggestion.  Much  of  the  warmth 
of  the  so-called  emotion  of  religion  is  impos- 
sible to  us,  and  ought  to  be  impossible  in  this 
age  to  anybody.  For  instance,  there  is  no 
human  being  called  by  our  name  who  has  the 
slightest  interest  in  that  form  of  theologic 
presentment  which  belonged  to  the  chromo 
period  of  ecclesiastical  art,  which  depicts  an 
uninteresting  Heaven  largely  derived  from  Mil- 
ton's Paradise  Lost.  The  Book  of  Revela- 
tion also  is  so  often  quoted  for  proof-texts, 
that  it  seems  well  to  say  it  does  not  re- 
fer to  Heaven,  from  the  first  to  the  last.  It  is 
the  story  of  the  New  Jerusalem  on  earth,  the 
vision  of  the  regeneration  of  human  society. 
But  the  Divines,  so-called,  who  live  their  little 
lives  tied  to  their  body  of  divinity,  after  the 
manner  of  Paul  when  he  cried,  "  Who  shall 
deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  " — for 
a  "  body  of   divinity  "  is  always  a  corpse, — 


"A  Cold,  Intellectual  Religion  "     179 

these  Divines  have  pictured  Heaven  to  make 
men  want  to  go  there  ;  but  they  have  never 
made  them  in  any  haste  to  die.  They  may 
also  picture  Hell  to  make  sinners  want  to  stay 
away,  and  it  is  an  interesting  experiment  in 
the  ghost -lore  and  spook -lore  of  primitive 
faiths,  but  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  religion. 

If  a  human  being  goes  to  an  incurable  hell 
there  is  no  God ;  an  incurable  hell  and  a  lov- 
ing God  cannot  be  in  the  universe  at  the 
same  time.  You  cannot  have  an  incurable 
hell  and  an  unexhausted  compassion  at  the 
same  time  ;  with  all  such  aspects  of  doctrine 
we  have  nothing  to  do.  We  cannot  make 
people  feel,  if  that  makes  them  feel.  They 
are  in  the  condition  of  those  who  cannot  sit 
down  and  read  a  drama  and  see  it  enacted 
in  the  mind  ;  they  must  have  melodrama  on 
the  stage, — the  "barn-storming"  type  of  act- 
ing, and  all  the  other  exciting  conditions  of  a 
half-developed  art.  That  is  their  situation, 
and  they  must  get  it  where  they  can.  We 
cannot  furnish  it,  thank  God  !  If  that  con- 
stitutes the  chill,  then  it  is  the  chill  of  early 
spring,  in  which  all  the  buds  are  swelling  in 
spite  of  the  chill  of  the  atmosphere,  because 
the  sap  is  running  up  and  the  vital  forces 
of   the   world   are    reviving   and   calling   the 


i8o  One  World  at  a  Time 

summer  to  banish  laggard  winter  from  the 
world.  The  man  who  feels  this  chill  must 
go  back  into  his  shell  until  he  has  been 
furnished  the  temperature  which  his  thin 
blood  invites. 

For  the  most  of  us  God's  outdoors  in  the 
open  weather  is  good  enough,  and  we  need 
neither  heaven  nor  hell  of  the  old  proportions, 
nor  yet  a  God  of  the  old  revolting  type, 
"  to  make  us  feel."  The  eternal  compassion, 
the  unfailing  goodness  of  God  is  not  en- 
throned now  remotely  and  alien  from  man  ; 
it  is  simply  in  the  world  to  rational  faith  ; 
kindled  in  all  its  emotions  by  unfailing  affec- 
tion, He  is  enthroned  in  every  worshipping 
heart ;  so  that  a  new  Deity  needs  a  new 
worship,  so  much  larger  is  the  fact  of  God ; 
and  prayer  must  take  on  an  adoration  which 
the  old  type  of  supplication  would  not  allow  ; 
and  praise  must  sound  in  terms  so  great  that 
its  old  feebleness  shall  seem  like  the  plaintive 
echo  of  spirits  in  prison  longing  for  the  light 
of  the  outer  world.  "  Great  hopes  are  for 
great  souls  ! " 


CHAPTER  VIII 
"A  DIFFICULT  RELIGION" 

WHAT  people  mean  by  a  form  of  faith 
being  "  difificiilt  "  may  be  of  two  kinds  ; 
either  they  may  mean  that  it  is  difficult  to 
understand,  or  they  may  mean  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  carry  out  in  practical  living.  These 
are  the  only  difficulties  that  confront  people 
in  the  consideration  of  a  religious  faith  : 
either  their  minds  do  not  grasp  it  easily, 
or  their  lives  do  not  adjust  themselves  to 
it  readily. 

Now,  what  do  we  mean  by  a  statement  of 
religion  being  difficult  to  understand  ?  We 
mean  that  its  definitions  are  hard  to  come  at. 
That  is  the  only  thing  there  is  to  understand 
in  religion  ;  all  the  rest  is  experience.  For 
instance,  when  one  declares  that  he  misses 
an  elaborated  theological  statement  in  Uni- 
tarianism,  we  answer :  That  is  our  boast,  that 
we  do  not  make  an  elaborated  theological 
statement.     For  if   you    will    analyse   any  of 


1 82  One  World  at  a  Time 

the  histories  of  dogma  running  through  the 
Christian  centuries,  you  will  discover  that 
they  are  taken  up,  for  the  most  part,  with 
what  no  human  being  ever  could  know  ;  that 
is,  they  are  discussing  questions  that  are  not 
only  impossible  of  determination,  but  they 
are  impossible  of  adjustment  to  practical 
living.  How  can  any  human  being  know 
whether  God  is  one,  or  three,  or  a  million  ? 
"  No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time."  If 
I  am  asked  if  the  unity  of  God  is  theolo- 
gically true,  I  say,  I  do  not  know  whether 
it  is  theologically  true.  I  only  know  that  it 
is  philosophically  necessary,  because  you  can- 
not get  on  in  the  study  of  a  universe  that 
has  no  centre.  You  cannot  get  on  in  the 
study  of  forces  that  are  modes  of  manifest- 
ation of  one  energy  if  you  are  not  sure  that 
the  energy  is  one.  You  are  immediately 
caught  in  the  snare  and  stumble  on  the 
difficulties  of  contradictory  first  causes.  The 
very  phrase  is  contradictory  ;  there  cannot 
be  two  first  causes.  I  am  not  concerned 
as  to  whether  the  unity  of  God  is  theo- 
logically true  ;  I  am  only  concerned  with  the 
question  whether  it  is  philosophically  neces- 
sary in  order  to  my  thinking,  and  whether 
it    focuses    the    mind    best,    and    brings   the 


-A  Difficult  Religion"  183 


human  enerofies  to  their  acts  of  devotion 
and  acts  of  service  with  least  distraction. 
People  who  want  a  theory  of  the  Trinity  go 
browsing  back  through  the  various  pasture- 
lands  of  theological  outcropping,  and  gather 
here  a  form  of  tritheism,  and  there  a  modal 
form  of  manifestation ;  and  when  they  are 
through  it  is  something  no  human  being 
can  know.  So  with  regard  to  the  question 
of  the  deity  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  People 
say,  '*  It  is  so  easy  to  believe  that  he  was 
God."  And  no  one  of  them  can  tell  what 
God  is  like.  They  really  mean  what  Starr 
King — our  splendid  Starr  King — said  when 
he  declared,  "  O  God,  Thou  art  an  infinite 
Christ."  In  other  words,  he  meant  what  they 
mean,  that  the  divine  quality  that  is  in  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  his  perfect  manhood  and  hu- 
manity, are  in  such  terms  of  sublimity  and 
grandeur  and  purity,  that  if  we  could  have 
them  infinitely  extended,  we  would  have  a 
Being  whom  we  could  worship,  and  it  would 
be  God.  That  is  what  they  mean  when  they 
say,  "  It  is  so  easy  to  believe  that  Jesus  is 
God."  In  saying  this  their  logic  breaks  down, 
but  their  impulse  is  just  right.  So,  if  a  man 
should  come  to  me  and  say,  as  men  have 
said,    "  What  would    you  do  with  me  in  the 


1 84  One  World  at  a  Time 

Unitarian  Church  if  I  came  in  and  said  that 
Jesus  is  God  ?  "  I  would  say  to  him  at  once  : 
"  I  would  not  quarrel  with  you  at  all.  I 
would  infinitely  rather  have  you  say  that 
he  is  God  than  that  he  is  'mere  man.'" 
That  is  the  most  disagreeable  phrase  in  the 
language  to  a  Unitarian  ear, — "mere  man." 
For  no  human  beinor  knows  what  "  mere  man" 
is,  any  more  than,  as  someone  has  said,  he 
knows  what  "  mere  Alps "  or  "  mere  solar 
system  "  is.  We  do  not  use  diminutive  terms 
when  we  speak  of  the  finest  things  human 
nature  has  ever  seen.  If  a  man  says,  "  Jesus 
was  God,"  he  would  be  mistaken  in  the  fact, 
but  if  he  said,  "  Jesus  was  mere  man,"  that 
would  be  a  mistake  in  his  morale.  In  one 
instance  he  would  be  exalting  the  human  be- 
yond its  proportions  ;  in  the  other  instance 
he  would  be  degrading  it  below  his  respect. 
The  first  is  an  intellectual  misapprehension  ; 
the  second  is  a  moral  error.  So  when  we 
make  a  distinction  between  deity  and  divinity, 
we  are  encountered  by  people  who  say  :  "It  is 
extremely  hard  to  understand.  What  is  the 
difference  between  deity  and  divinity  ?  You 
say  'Jesus  is  divine;  all  humanity  is  divine.' 
What  do  you  mean  ?  "  I  mean  that  it  has  in 
it  the  stuff   that  God  can  show  Himself   in. 


A  Difficult  Relidon"  185 


fc>' 


That  is  to  be  divine.  But  there  is  but  "  one 
God,  the  Father,  whose  we  are,  and  whom 
we  serve."  We  are  all  stuff  that  He  can  make 
Himself  manifest  in.  Suppose  you  have  a 
sculptor  with  every  ideal  of  art  in  his  mind, 
with  all  the  beautiful  visions  of  his  mind, 
seeking  expression  in  some  material  that  is  fit. 
Phidias  could  not  have  made  his  figure  for 
the  Acropolis  out  of  sponge.  He  needed 
gold  and  ivory.  He  needed  workable  material 
that  was  susceptible  of  fine  finish.  He  needed 
the  gold's  lustre  and  the  ivory's  shine,  and 
the  pliability  of  each  to  the  graver's  tool.  If 
he  had  taken  sponge  or  cork,  or  some  porous 
substance,  he  might  have  had  an  idea  like 
God,  but  when  he  got  through  he  would  have 
had  a  thing  like  a  sponge.  That  is  what  we 
mean  by  the  divine  quality  in  human  nature, 
and  in  Jesus,  its  best  representative  ;  and 
the  only  reason  that  people  find  it  difficult 
to  understand  is  that  their  minds  are  sophis- 
ticated by  theological  preconceptions  ;  and 
there  is  a  law  in  physics  that  you  cannot  put 
two  things  in  the  same  place  at  the  same  time. 
If  the  mind  is  filled  up  with  theological  junk, 
the  only  thing  to  do  in  order  to  find  Unitari- 
anism  easy,  is  to  clear  out  the  old  stock  and 
start  in  business  from  the  basis  of  something 


i86  One  World  at  a  Time 

that  the  world  wants.  So,  in  all  the  history 
of  dogma,  people  miss  the  things  they  have 
somehow  or  other  attached  to  religfion.  I 
remember  distinctly  the  first  day  on  which, 
when  I  was  twenty  years  of  age,  there  came 
to  me  the  conception  that  religion  was  some- 
thing that  could  be  stated  in  terms  of  soul, 
and  was  not  necessarily  stated  in  terms  of 
theoloorical  definition  ;  and  I  grathered  that 
from  the  earliest  book  of  Dr.  Martineau,  £n- 
deavors  after  the  Christiaii  Life.  I  remem- 
ber standing  up  in  the  middle  of  my  room,  a 
young  Methodist  preacher  in  the  country,  in 
Maryland,  and  opening  that  book,  and  saying  : 
"  Here  is  a  discovery.  Here  is  a  man  who 
tells  about  religion  in  terms  of  soul.  If  he  is 
dealing  with  Christ,  it  is  not  in  terms  of  an 
atonement.  If  he  is  dealing  with  God,  it  is 
not  in  terms  of  a  Trinity.  If  he  is  dealing 
with  the  future  life,  it  is  not  in  terms  of  heaven 
and  hell.  It  is  all  in  terms  of  soul."  To 
anybody  who  has  had  the  other  training, 
that  comes  with  a  shock  and  surprise.  The 
student  who  has  been  taken  out  of  the  secul- 
arism of  his  life  and  put  under  the  training 
of  academic  professors  in  a  theological  semin- 
ary gets  caught  in  the  mesh  of  the  net,  so 
that  he  does  not  swim  clear  for  quite  a  while, 


"A  Difficult  Religion"  187 

no  matter  how  deep  the  sea  is,  nor  how 
pellucid  the  waves.  So  they  say  Unitarian- 
ism  is  difficult,  because  of  the  trailing  re- 
mainder  of  theory  in  which  they  tangle  their 
feet  when  they  are  trying  to  be  free. 

Now  when  we  come  to  the  second  form  of 
difficulty — not  the  difficulty  of  understanding, 
for  our  scheme  of  life,  our  method  of  looking 
at  things  is  perfectly  simple — but  when  we 
come  to  the  other,  the  task  of  adjusting  life  to 
it,  there  is  a  real  difficulty.  I  have  no  interest  in 
easy  religion.  Easy  thinking  is  apt  to  be  foolish 
thinking.  Easy  ethics  is  either  morals  turned 
loose,  not  girded  as  to  the  loin,  not  tightened  as 
to  the  purpose  ;  or  else  it  is  small  moralities  ; 
and  there  is  a  great  mass  of  people  in  the  congre- 
gations of  the  Christian  churches  who  are  best 
satisfied  when  there  are  being  peddled  out  to 
them  small  moralities, — a  kind  of  retail  busi- 
ness in  "  fancy  notions"  in  religion.  They  are 
perfectly  satisfied  under  those  conditions.  Now 
I  have  not  the  slightest  interest  in  that.  The 
religious  life  should  be  difficult  in  its  thinking, 
difficult  in  its  purpose,  difficult  in  its  struggle, 
to  the  point  where  it  is  victorious,  in  some 
phase  of  experience,  and  from  that  time  on 
that  phase  of  it,  at  least,  becomes  easy.  Why 
should  the  apprentice  make  infinite  blunders 


1 88  One  World  at  a  Time 

in  his  craft  ?  Why  should  the  artist  struggle 
through  years  of  preparation  ?  Why  should 
the  medical  student  find  the  utmost  difficulty 
in  getting  anybody  to  let  him  experiment 
upon  him  ?  Why  should  any  of  the  crafts 
and  skills  of  life  come  only  by  infinite  strug- 
gle, outlay  of  effort,  mind,  and  exertion  the 
most  strenuous  and  insistent,  and  the  religious 
life,  which  is  the  science  of  manhood,  the  re- 
ligious life,  which  is  the  splendid  achievement 
of  the  human  soul, — the  making  of  a  human 
soul,  which  is  the  only  business  you  have  in 
hand, — why  should  that  come  easily  to  peo- 
ple who  six  days  out  of  the  week  are  plunged 
in  a  bog  of  daily  duties,  and  come  out  on  Sun- 
day to  sun  themselves  for  an  hour  ?  The  fact 
is,  the  religious  life  ought  to  be  difficult,  if  it 
is  worth  while.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  it  is 
difficult  because  it  is  unnatural,  abnormal,  or 
supernatural.  It  is  the  natural  that  is  so  diffi- 
cult. In  a  group  of  sycophants  it  is  difficult 
for  a  sincere  man  to  speak  the  truth.  In  a 
group  of  traders,  by  some  occult  process  of 
the  markets,  it  is  difficult  for  a  man  who  has 
something  to  sell  and  knows  its  value,  either 
to  set  his  price  or  to  get  it.  A  man  said  to 
me,  when  I  asked  him  why  two  immortal  souls 
should  be  six  weeks  buying  a  horse,  "  If  we 


"  A  Difficult  Religion  "  189 

came  to  terms  within  three  days,  we  should 
each  think  the  other  had  cheated  him  !  "  It  is 
the  natural  that  is  difficult.  I  n  a  period  of  court 
manners,  the  natural  man  is  called  brusque 
and  lacking  in  the  diplomatic  address  of  the 
court.  So  with  regard  to  the  whole  range  of 
life.  Our  first  struggle  is  to  get  back  to  the 
simplicities  of  nature.  Any  woman  in  the 
midst  of  "  the  season  "  will  tell  you  that  much  of 
her  time  is  given  to  the  study  of  what  is  ex- 
pected of  her,  to  the  study  of  the  conventions 
that  cloister  her  on  every  side,  to  the  weigh- 
ing of  probabilities  as  to  the  effect  of  this  or 
that  method  of  life,  dress,  and  behaviour. 
The  inanities  of  this  sort  that  come  to  a  min- 
ister's knowledge  would  make  a  comic  issue  of 
the  book  of  life  if  it  were  not  for  the  tragic 
waste  involved.  And  all  for  want  of  sim- 
plicity, directness,  and  naturalness  of  life. 
Somebody  starts  out  who  is  perfectly  natural ; 
and  he  is  immediately  called  Bohemian,  irregu- 
ular,  daring.  He  is  living  his  own  life  on  his 
own  terms.  Of  course,  he  must  moderate  his 
own  terms  to  conform  to  the  social  contract, 
for  he  is  not  living  alone,  he  is  living  in  society. 
I  use  this  illustration  simply  to  call  your  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  it  is  not  because  re- 
ligion is  abnormal,  unnatural,  supernatural,  but 


iQo  One  World  at  a  Time 

absolutely  an  expression  of  nature,  that  it  is 
difficult  to  conform  to  its  simplest  require- 
ments. 

What  is  involved,  then,  in  the  Unitarian 
faith,  as  it  applies  to  life  ? 

First,  passion  for  the  Truth.  There  is  a  very- 
good  definition  given  of  the  true,  the  good,  and 
the  beautiful,  that  "The  true  is  what  is  ;  the 
good  is  what  ought  to  be ;  and  the  beautiful  is 
what  is  as  it  ought  to  be."  That  is  a  very  good 
definition  ;  and  if  we  will  just  think  for  a  mo- 
ment how  far  we  live  aside  from  that  require- 
ment, how  far  we  are  from  demanding  what  is, 
— rather  asking  to  hear  what  we  can  bear,  and 
to  see  what  we  ought  to  gaze  upon,  and  to  walk 
by  paths  that  are  safe,  going  cannily  even  then, 
— when  we  realise  that  this  is  the  common  de- 
mand, then  the  passion  for  the  truth,  as  the 
thing  that  is,  comes  before  the  soul  as  almost 
an  impossible  ideal.  And  yet  in  a  world  of 
fancies,  the  only  Infallible  Pope  is  the  fact. 
The  fact  is  the  only  infallible  thing  in  the 
world  ;  and  the  search  for  the  thing  that  is,  as 
to  the  soul,  as  to  the  soul's  endeavour,  as  to  the 
will  of  God,  as  to  the  adjustment  of  the  right 
relations  of  life,  as  to  character, — the  passion 
for  that  marks  a  demand  that  is  difficult,  but 
is  as  necessary  as  it  is  difficult,  if  our  interest 


"A  Difficult  Reliction"  191 


t>' 


is  in  the  forming  of  character,  in  the  living  of 
the  higher  life.  And  by  the  higher  life  I  simply 
mean  human  life  ;  by  the  lower  life,  brute  life. 
The  higher  life  is  the  human  life  :  carried  to  its 
infinite  extension,  you  get  The  Christ ;  carried 
to  its  infinite  possibilities,  you  get  the  humanity 
of  God. 

So  we  are  given,  not  only  to  the  passion  for 
the  truth,  but  to  the  love  of  goodness.  Often 
the  incisive,  the  far-down,  deep  trouble  with  us 
is  that  men  do  not  believe  in  the  triumph  of 
goodness.  Men  who  believe  in  that  would 
stake  everything  on  it ;  but  you  will  meet  other 
men  at  the  crossing  of  the  roads  of  some  moral 
action,  and  if  you  could  look  into  their  minds,  if 
you  could  know  what  they  were  thinking  about, 
almost  unconsciously  to  themselves,  at  the 
cross-roads  between  right  and  wrong,  where 
that  road  leads  to  death,  and  this  to  life, — you 
would  find  them  standing  there  wondering  if 
there  be  not  some  short  road  across  lots  ;  they 
spend  their  energy  and  power  of  mind  and 
strength  upon  a  nice  balancing  of  probabilities, 
as  to  whether  they  can  sail  close  to  the  reefs 
of  wrong-doing  and  yet  escape.  They  spend 
upon  that  question  energies  of  soul  and  mind 
that  would  make  saints  of  them  if  it  were  ap- 
plied to  the  real  development  of  the  spiritual 


192  One  World  at  a  Time 

life.  Our  real  trouble  is  that  we  do  not  believe 
in  goodness.  We  worship  smartness ;  we 
worship  cleverness  ;  we  worship  wealth.  What 
a  sickening  thing  it  is  to  have  the  papers  con- 
stantly filled  with  just  two  items  :  one,  the  fam- 
ilies that  have  gone  to  pieces  over  night ;  the 
other,  the  fortunes  that  have  been  made  in  the 
last  twenty-four  hours  !  The  triumph  of  good- 
ness is  better  than  the  divorce  court ;  and  the 
vindication  of  goodness  is  better  than  the  for- 
tune of  a  millionaire.  I  do  not  q-q  so  far  as 
the  proverb  that  says,  "  Better  is  a  dinner  of 
herbs."  That  might  be  very  well  for  a  man  who 
had  everything  and  could  make  proverbs  for 
people  who  had  nothing,  as  Solomon  did.  But 
the  real  necessity  is,  that  the  man  in  the  rough 
and  tumble  of  life — the  man  who  is  underneath 
the  crowd  that  is  piled  on  top  of  him — if  he 
would  save  himself  alive,  must  believe  in  the 
ultimate  triumph  of  goodness.  Failure  here  is 
the  only  infidelity  left  in  the  world.  A  man 
cannot  philosophically  say,  "There  is  no  God." 
We  have  worked  out  of  the  materialism  in 
which  it  was  said  that  man  had  no  soul.  That 
Slough  of  Despond  has  been  waded,  and  we 
are  on  firm  land,  philosophically  and  scientifi- 
cally. The  only  real  infidelity  is  that  of  the 
man  who  prefers  to  get  on,   no  matter  how 


*'  A  Difficult  Religion  "  193 

soon  he  may  have  to  get  off.  His  ideal  of 
success  is  accumulation,  aggrandisement,  posi- 
tion, elevation  ;  when,  if  for  one  day  he  were 
enamoured  of  goodness,  these  things  would 
seem  to  him  so  empty  that  he  would  feel  as  if 
he  had  been  walking  in  the  midst  of  shadows, 
and  living  to  no  purpose  whatever. 

Finally,  there  is  the  adoration  of  what  ought 
to  be  in  perfect  character.  The  Unitarian 
churches  are  not  allowed  by  their  code  of 
what  is  right  to  boast  of  perfection.  We 
know  that  we  are  not  perfect.  But  between 
boasting  of  **  sanctification,"  "  perfection," 
speaking  of  the  Infinite  Being  as  though  He 
were  somebody  that  lived  around  the  corner, 
in  the  most  irrelevant  and  irreverent  way,  — 
between  that  and  the  struggle  to  be  good,  the 
adoration  of  character,  there  is  all  the  stretch 
of  celestial  diameters.  And  the  business  of 
religion  is  the  formation  of  character.  The 
people  who  find  this  difficult  come  to  us  and 
say :  "  When  you  speak  of  being  saved  by 
character,  are  you  not  arrogating  to  yourselves 
righteousness?"  Our  answer  Is  very  sim- 
ple. We  do  not  know  of  any  righteousness 
except  our  own.  If  there  be  any  righteous- 
ness that  I  can  have  "  imputed  "  to  me,  It  will 
not  be  mine,  any  more  than  somebody's  else 


194  One  World  at  a  Time 

costume  would  be  mine  if  I  appeared  in  it. 
If  I  may  have  a  righteousness  that  is  not 
mine,  there  must  be  some  means  of  communi- 
cation between  my  soul  and  God  to  make  it 
mine.  The  fact  is,  there  is  only  one  kind  of 
righteousness  that  a  man  can  know,  —  the 
kind  that  to  him  is  ideal ;  he  sees  it  in  another 
and  he  strives  for  it  himself.  That  is  the 
whole  problem  of  life.  There  is  no  system  of 
atonement ;  no  attributing  to  me  of  the  vir- 
tues of  another;  no  saving  of  my  soul  by  any 
process  that  is  outside  myself  that  can  possibly 
be  effective.  Would  you  save  your  soul  by 
some  process  of  theological  insurance  ?  If 
you  are  saved,  your  soul  will  do  the  saving. 
In  other  words,  you  will  come  up  by  soul-force 
into  the  life,  whatever  it  is,  that  belongs  to 
the  Great  Father — the  life  that  is  in  reserve 
for  us ;  you  will  come  up  into  it  as  the  seed 
comes  up  into  the  summer,  because  it  has  the 
power  of  fertility  and  life  in  itself. 

The  problem  of  saving  the  soul  is  to  have 
a  soul  that  is  worth  saving.  Now,  no  man 
can  say  that  of  himself  in  any  arrogant 
way  ;  but,  after  all,  it  is  the  thing  we  be- 
lieve concerning  those  whom  we  feel  have 
been  brouofht  out  of  death  into  life,  out  of 
trouble   into   victory,   out   of  temptation   into 


"  A  Difficult  Religion  "  195 

achievement :  that  they  were  there  by  virtue 
of  a  faculty  in  them  which  could  not  be  killed 
nor  set  aside.  If  you  are  ever  saved,  your  soul 
will  be  the  instrument  of  your  salvation.  No 
miner  ever  carries  out  his  work  in  the  vein 
where  he  does  not  expect  to  find  ore.  It  is 
the  real,  essential  value  of  human  life  that  it 
cannot  perish  without  affecting  the  life  of 
God. 

Unitarianism  is  an  exacting  faith.  There 
are  apt  to  be  in  all  our  churches  people  who, 
because  they  are  affronted  by  Orthodoxy, 
think  they  are  Unitarians  ;  because  they  have 
found  it  impossible  to  believe  the  old  state- 
ment, say,  "We  are  Unitarians."  The  idea 
is  very  common  that,  because  you  can  swear 
at  a  thing  in  which  you  do  not  believe,  you 
have  sworn  to  a  thing  in  which  you  have 
come  to  believe.  Mere  revolt,  mere  angry 
denunciation,  mere  protest,  is  not  religion. 
It  is  only  a  convulsion  of  the  mind.  When 
you  get  over  your  convulsion,  and  conditions 
of  health  set  in,  you  are  ready  to  be  brought 
out  to  a  larger  and  better  faith. 

We  must  allow  for  these  people  who  are 
clinging  to  a  raft  because  they  have  escaped 
from  the  wreck — which  is  a  very  natural  atti- 
tude ;  if  the  ship  has  gone  to  pieces  and  you 


196  One  World  at  a  Time 

are  in  the  sea,  you  naturally  cling  to  the  thing 
that  is  afloat ;  it  may  be  a  bit  of  timber,  or  it 
may  be  a  life-raft ;  but  after  we  have  allowed 
for  this  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  the  theological 
world,  we  come  to  those  who  are  strueoflinof, 
with  devotion  to  the  truth,  the  adoration  of 
goodness,  the  endeavour  for  character  that  is 
safe  because  it  is  sound.  What  is  the  exaction 
upon  them?  There  are  just  three  particulars. 
The  first  is  that  religion  is  an  experience  and 
not  a  theory.  It  is  a  conscious,  deliberate, 
constant  realisation  of  communion  between 
the  soul  and  God.  If  that  were  not  known  by 
thousands  upon  thousands  in  all  the  churches, 
then  the  Church  would  have  ceased  to  be  effect- 
ive, and  the  ministry  would  have  come  to  be 
the  mere  show  of  a  profession.  That  is  the 
first  exaction  that  Unitarianism  lays  upon 
the  soul,  because  it  has  no  artificial  helps  for 
the  soul.  It  does  not  furnish  emotional 
gatherings,  in  which,  by  excitation  of  the 
emotions,  the  religious  life  is  made  to  seem 
possible  for  the  moment.  It  does  not  have  an 
elaborated  liturgy  with  its  services.  It  makes 
its  own  service  in  each  instance.  If  it  rises  to 
power  and  efficiency,  that  is  because  the  peo- 
ple engaged  in  it  have  power.  There  are  few 
helps   in    Unitarianism  of  an    external    kind. 


"  A  Difficult  Religion  "  197 

We  do  not  believe  that  man  is  lame,  so  we  do 
not  furnish  crutches.  We  do  not  believe  that 
man  is  sick,  so  we  do  not  prescribe  nostrums. 
We  do  not  believe  he  is  lost,  so  we  do  not 
propose  for  him  salvation  from  hell.  None  of 
the  pictorial  conditions  are  with  us  that  are 
furnished  by  other  churches.  We  are  saved 
much  time  and  much  endeavour,  and  get  down 
to  the  central  fact  in  all  religion,  under  all 
names,  namely  :  Can  the  soul  know  God,  and 
does  it  know  when  God  speaks  to  it  ?  And 
that  is  the  thing  for  which  you  and  I  are  to 
struggle  from  first  to  last  ;  and  if  we  do  not 
realise  it  in  some  sense,  we  have  not  touched 
the  border  of  the  religious  life. 

The  second  difficulty  arises  from  the  fact  that 
we  have  focused  responsibility  upon  man.  We 
stand  by  the  order  of  Nature  —  and  Nature 
does  not  allow  us  to  put  our  sins  on  anybody 
else.  You  charge  your  sickness  to  the  drainage  ; 
but  you  have  to  take  your  own  medicine — 
you  do  not  pour  it  down  the  drain.  You  say, 
"  I  was  hurt  by  a  blunder  of  the  motorman." 
Very  well ;  but  it  is  not  the  motorman's  legs 
that  are  put  in  splints.  The  whole  system  of 
thought  with  us  is  that  you  have  got  to  focus 
responsibility  well  in  the  foreground  of  your 
life.     We    do    our    own    book-keeping,    and 


198  One  World  at  a  Time 

balance  our  debit  and  credit  as  the  days  go  by. 
The  system  that  relieves  man  of  responsibil- 
ity, defrauds  him  of  moral  power.  There  is 
a  vulgar  proverb  in  the  Old  Testament  in 
which  Jehovah  is  represented  as  saying,  "Ye 
shall  no  more  say,  The  fathers  have  eaten 
sour  grapes  and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on 
edge.  I  say  unto  you  that  all  souls  are  mine. 
As  the  soul  of  the  father,  so  the  soul  of  the 
son  is  mine,  and  the  soul  that  sinneth  it  shall 
die."  That  is  the  teaching,  not  of  the  Old 
Testament  alone,  but  of  the  New.  Did  Jesus 
deal  gently  and  suavely  with  life  ?  No  ;  he 
dealt  with  life  as  a  surgeon.  He  said,  "Why 
beholdest  thou  the  mote  that  is  in  thy  brother's 
eye,  but  considerest  not  the  beam  that  is  in 
thine  own  eye  ? "  He  dealt  with  things  as 
they  were,  and  built  from  the  ground  up.  The 
whole  business  of  life  is  to  get  your  respons- 
ibility so  near  home  that  you  can  attend  to  it. 

The  Unitarian  faith  is  difficult  because  it  in- 
sists that  you  shall  look  out  for  the  other  man. 
There  is  not  room  in  it  for  selfishness,  and  a 
selfish  Unitarian  is  no  Unitarian  at  all.  If  you 
are  intent  on  your  own  condition,  your  own 
affairs,  you  may  go  somewhere  else  and  attend 
to  them.  There  is  no  room  for  anybody 
who  is  self-centered  and  focused  on  his  own 


"  A  Difficult  Religion  "  199 

affairs  ;  there  is  no  room  in  life,  in  nature, 
where  everything  is  related  and  nothing  stands 
alone, — there  is  no  room  for  the  man  who  is 
only  taken  up  with  himself.  "  Thou  shalt  love 
the  other  as  thyself,"  is  not  new  with  us.  It 
falls  from  the  lips  of  Christ,  and  we  believe,  as 
one  of  the  fathers  of  the  Church  well  said  : 
"  Man  first ;  then  God."  And  I  doubt  whether 
any  human  being  ever  knows  God  in  any  sav- 
ing and  powerful  way  who  has  not  known 
man  in  some  intimate  and  sympathetic  way. 

These  are  some  of  the  exactions  ;  and  when 
men  say  that  we  are  difficult,  they  lose  sight  of 
the  fact  that  thousands  of  people  have  found 
it  not  too  difficult  to  live  the  sublime  and 
radiant  faith  that  they  believe.  Indeed,  it  is 
true  of  all  life,  that  the  radiance  and  joy  of  our 
inner  experience  is  in  the  very  ratio  in  which 
we  entertain  high  ideals.  The  human  soul 
that  in  a  large,  strong,  intimate,  and  real  way 
deals  with  things  as  they  are,  because  the  soul 
is  struggling  toward  God,  finds  its  heaven  here, 
and  its  divine  communion  lasting. 


CHAPTER  IX 
"PULLING   DOWN  AND  BUILDING  UP" 

SOMETIMES  it  is  said  that  Unitarianisin 
is  a  religion  of  denial ;  sometimes  that  it 
is  a  religion  of  negation  ;  sometimes  that  it  is 
entirely  occupied  with  the  critical  faculty.  But 
I  have  stated  the  objection  in  its  simplest  and 
most  understandable  form,  namely,  the  con- 
stantly recurring  criticism  that  Unitarianism 
pulls  down  but  does  not  build  up.  There  could 
not  be  anything  more  untrue  ;  but  that  is  not  an 
answer  ;  that  is  a  protest.  If  this  criticism 
were  true,  then  Unitarianism  ought  to  go  out 
of  business.  If  it  were  only  partially  true,  it 
would  be  a  serious  arraignment  of  its  useful- 
ness. But  since  it  is  absolutely  untrue  to  the 
last  degree  as  touching  anything  that  ought 
not  to  be  pulled  down,  my  answer  may  meet, 
in  several  particulars,  I  hope,  the  criticism  that 
it  is  a  religion  that  pulls  down  but  does  not 
build  up. 

What   do  the  critics  mean  who  say  this? 


*'  Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "  201 

They  mean  that  Unitarlanism  has  encouraged 
free  inquiry ;  and  this,  to  one  who  wishes  to 
wall  himself  up  in  dreams,  or  immure  himself 
in  theories,  'or  hedge  himself  by  traditions,  or 
embark  upon  a  raft  that  never  goes  anywhere, 
but  is  in  perpetual  oscillation  on  the  high  sea 
of  mind,  is  a  horror  and  a  distress.  There  are 
people  who  are  perfectly  willing  to  anchor  to  a 
floating  bog,  and  when  they  think  they  have 
made  progress,  it  has  only  been  because  their 
anchorage  has  shifted ;  they  have  not  gone 
anywhere  by  intention.  There  are  people  who 
are  entirely  satisfied  to  regard  the  anchor  as 
the  entire  equipment  of  a  ship,  making  no  pro- 
vision for  sails,  or  steam,  or  cordage,  or  even  a 
binnacle-light,  to  say  nothing  of  chart  and 
helmsman,  and  all  the  splendid  equipment  of 
the  voyage  of  mind  and  the  adventure  of  the 
spirit.  These  are  the  people  who  discount 
free  inquiry.  These  are  the  people  who  have 
forcjotten  that  it  was  a  Church  Father — St. 
Hilary — who  said,  "If  offence  come  with  the 
truth,  then  better  the  offence  than  that  the 
truth  should  be  concealed."  What  this  class 
of  critics  has  forgotten  would  make  a  library  ; 
and  what  they  have  not  known  would  equip  a 
great  university  with  material  of  literature  and 
knowledge.     What   shall    the  human  mind — 


202  One  World  at  a  Time 

the  thinking  machine  of  the  world — do  but 
think,  inquire,  put  a  premium  upon  investiga- 
tion, lay  bare  by  the  scalpel  the  tissues  of  the 
thing  inquired  into,  subject  to  the  close 
scrutiny  of  the  microscope  every  great  thought 
nature  has  to  reveal,  and  point  the  tube  of 
their  far-reaching  inquiry  by  the  telescope  into 
the  stellar  spaces,  to  find  God  still  at  work  ? 

But  if  anybody  is  afraid  to  have  his  mind  act, 
and  does  not  like  to  carry  his  personal  sover- 
eignty under  the  crown  of  his  own  hat,  and  wants 
to  have  what  the  mercantile  classes  call  "  ready- 
to-wear  "  opinions ;  why,  then,  to  such  people, 
Unitarianism  in  the  process  of  free  inquiry, 
seems  to  be  pulling  down  and  not  building  up. 
And  yet,  these  very  people,  if  they  are  devot- 
ees of  art,  would  have  stood  rejoicing  when 
the  wall  of  the  church  was  ripped  open  that  the 
Venus  of  the  Capitol  might  be  rescued  from 
Its  Immured  condition.  The  monks  walled  up 
the  chaste  figure,  because  they  were  afraid  of 
their  own  emotions  ;  and  a  later  age  ripped 
open  the  sacred  structure  that  it  might  recover 
an  ancient  work  of  art ;  and  it  did  well.  But 
these  who,  for  the  sake  of  sesthetlc  beauty  and 
the  history  of  art,  would  have  countenanced 
such  a  sacrilege  as  that,  when  the  human  mind 
is  Intent  upon  discovering  the  beauty  of  life  In 


"  Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "  203 

terms  of  power,  seek  at  once  an  anaesthetic,  an 
opiate,  something  that  will  act  as  a  sedative 
upon  inquiry,  and  they  shy  at  the  word  "  scep- 
tic," forgetting  that  it  was  Jesus  himself  who 
said  to  Thomas  :  "  Reach  hither  thy  finger  and 
see  my  hands  ;  and  reach  hither  thy  hand  and 
thrust  it  into  my  side  ;  and  be  not  faithless,  but 
believing."  This  was  what  the  Master  of  the 
art  of  living  said  to  the  sceptic  among  the 
disciples. 

This  criticism  that  Unitarianism  pulls  down 
and  does  not  build  up,  arises  also  from  the 
fact  that  Unitarianism  has  set  personal  re- 
ligion over  against  authority.  There  is  not  a 
member  of  the  Society  of  Friends  believing 
in  the  "inner  light"  —  there  is  no  Methodist 
intent  upon  the  revival  of  religion  in  the 
terms  of  the  ministry  of  the  Holy  Spirit, — 
there  is  no  lay  churchman  of  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church,  busy  with  evangelical  asser- 
tion of  the  rights  of  the  human  soul  as  against 
ritual, — there  is  no  Catholic  mystic  dreaming 
of  communion  even  upon  terms  so  carnal  as 
those  that  appear  in  the  words  of  Mary  of  the  In- 
carnation, whose  "  marriage  to  Christ "  affronts 
our  taste, — there  is  not  one  of  these  who  be- 
lieves more  profoundly  that  religion  is  not  a 
theory,    but    an     experience,    than    do    those 


204  One  World  at  a  Time 

Unitarians  that  are  worth  naminor  in  this  con- 
nection.  ReHgion  is  not  a  theory ;  it  is  an 
experience.  Its  definitions  are  theoretical ; 
but  men  do  not  live  in  definition.  Men  fight 
over  definitions  ;  they  grow  rabid  about  defini- 
tions ;  they  are  contentious  over  definitions; 
we  range  all  the  way  from  mild  protest  to 
violence  and  bloodshed  over  definitions.  And 
the  only  corrective  to  that  insanity  is  the  com- 
mon experience  of  divine  realities.  Men  un- 
derstand one  another  who  speak  the  language 
of  the  spirit,  who  never  could  understand  each 
other  when  speaking  the  language  of  speculat- 
ive theology.  Men  understand  one  another 
who  can  pray  together ;  just  as  men  with  the 
blazon  of  the  cross  before  them  marched  from 
every  part  of  Europe,  speaking  every  language 
of  the  Western  world,  to  rescue  the  sepulchre  of 
Christ,  because  they  were  inflamed  by  one 
common  purpose  that  to  them  was  the  experi- 
ence of  a  great  emotion  ;  and  they  fulfilled  the 
splendid  phrase  of  one  of  the  fathers  of  the 
Church,  who  speaks  of  "  the  expulsive  power  of 
a  great  affection." 

There  is  only  one  kind  of  way  to  love  purely 
and  strongly  in  the  world.  There  is  any  quan- 
tity of  diversities  in  the  theory  of  what  love  is 
like ;  how  love  is  provoked  ;  what  course  love 


"  Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "  205 

may  take  ;  what  are  the  physiological  and  psy- 
chological elements  that  enter  into  affection  ; 
how  far  it  is  based  in  brute  instinct,  and  how 
far  it  is  the  result  of  celestial  visitation.  All 
this,  that  might  be  extended  to  a  programme 
of  infinite  absurdity,  has  to  do  with  the  defini- 
tion ;  and  the  world  goes  on  loving  in  its  old, 
plain,  splendid,  regenerative  way  as  the  genera- 
tions go  by.  Religion  is  an  experience  of 
divine  realities.  It  is  not  to  be  had  by  au- 
thority, because  no  human  experience  can  be 
transplanted  from  one  human  soul  to  another. 
It  grows  in  every  case  from  the  seed,  and  the 
seed  is  harrowed  in  by  the  necessities  of  the 
spiritual  nature,  and  free  inquiry  and  personal 
obligation  are  necessary  to  the  mellowing  of 
the  soul  that  it  may  be  sowed  with  the  seed  of 
a  real  experience.  Now,  if  anybody  is  satis- 
fied with  authority,  then  that  is  the  kind  of 
thing  he  wants,  and  he  is  of  no  concern  to 
this  discussion.  If  anybody  must  have  author- 
ity that  runs  back  at  least  fifteen  hundred  years, 
he  should  go,  as  I  have  said,  into  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  It  is  not  the  genuine  thing. 
It  is  the  first  great  schism  in  Christianity, 
but  it  has  its  fifteen  hundred  years.  Let  him 
go  there  if  he  must  have  authority  ;  that  is, 
if   anybody  is  so  constructed   that   he    must 


2o6  One  World  at  a  Time 

have  crutches  when  he  is  not  lame,  then  the 
Catholic  Church  furnishes  the  most  admirable 
adaptation  of  fictitious  supports  for  beings 
that  have  legs.  But  that  is  not  a  substitute 
for  personal  religion.  A  woman  who  has  been 
in  one  of  the  great  churches  comes  to  me 
and  says :  "  When  I  came  face  to  face  with 
the  death  of  the  person  whom  I  loved  best 
in  all  the  world,  I  wanted  to  know  for  my- 
self what  were  the  issues  of  life  and  death." 
And  that,  every  minister  of  religion  confronts 
over  and  over  again.  For  calm  weather,  when 
indifference  is  quite  a  sufficient  equipment  for 
the  soul,  authority  is  quite  comfortable,  just  as 
securities  are  well  placed  in  some  bank  of  safe 
deposit ;  but  when  you  want  to  use  the  thing 
you  own  as  quick  assets  at  a  crisis,  you  must 
know  whether  it  is  negotiable  in  the  market. 
That  is  the  whole  situation.  That  is  the 
whole  question  :  Whether  I  can  take  another 
man's  opinion  for  a  thing  that  is  tearing  the 
soul  out  of  me.  Whether  I  can  take  an- 
other man's  discovery  for  my  consolation  when 
I  am  lost,  and  whether  a  chart  that  was  made 
in  the  seventeenth  century  is  good  sailing 
directions  for  a  voyage  made  in  the  twentieth 
century.  Because  Unitarianism  has  insisted 
upon  personal  religion  as  an  experience,  it  is 


"Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "  207 

said  that  it  pulls  down  and  does  not  build  up. 
Another  reason  that  affects  the  people  who 
are  influenced  by  numbers  :  There  is  always  a 
large  contingent  in  the  world  who  never  believe 
that  anything  is  so  unless  somebody  is  shout- 
ing about  it,  and  unless  a  great  many  people 
are  endorsins^  it.  A  thinof  is  true  in  the 
ratio  of  its  popularity;  and  Unitarianism  has 
not  set  itself  to  make  proselytes  nor  to  build 
churches  except  as  incidental  to  the  great  work 
of  building  character.  So  it  is  asked  :  "  Why 
is  it  that  you  have  less  than  five  hundred 
churches  in  America  ?  "  There  is  no  answer 
to  that,  except  that  building  churches  would 
possibly  have  diverted  us  from  the  great  task 
of  building  a  literature,  which  we  have  done. 
Every  man  of  the  first  rank  in  the  literary 
group  of  the  last  generation,  with  one  or  two 
exceptions,  was  a  member,  avowed  and  devoted, 
of  a  Unitarian  Church.  This  is  not  a  boast ;  it 
is  a  fact.  They  did  not  apologise  for  it.  Why 
should  I  apologise  for  them  ?  I  simply  state 
the  fact,  that  the  great  names,  which  I  will  not 
take  time  to  rehearse,  with  the  exception  of 
Washington  Irving  and  one  other,  were  Unit- 
arians. They  were  busy  with  the  production  of 
what  has  been  the  companionableness  of  liter- 
ature in  this  country,  and  which  was  supposed 


2o8  One  World  at  a  Time 

to  constitute  a  literature  until  Mr.  Barrett  Wen- 
dell wrote  his  book  a  few  months  ago. 

Unitarians  are  reproached  with  not  being 
many.  Well,  that  is  not  their  method.  That 
is  not  the  method  of  sane  government  in  matters 
secular.  We  believe  in  a  democracy  ;  but  we 
commit  the  administration  of  it  to  a  few.  We 
j  believe  in  the  ideal  of  free  trade,  but  we  see  to  it 
that  protection  lasts  until  free  trade  is  possible. 
We  believe  in  the  absolute  right  of  all  men  to 
have  whatever  they  can  hold  ;  but,  after  all,  if 
you  should  divide  all  the  wealth  to-day,  in  ten 
years  it  would  be  back  in  the  hands  of  those 
who  could  hold  it.  So  that  we  are  not  to 
I  blame  for  not  multiplying  churches.  We  have 
-'  been  buildingf  schools.  We  have  been  endow- 
ing  universities.  We  have  been  creating  a 
literature,  and  we  have  been  trying  to  build 
up  character.  And  numbers  are  not  the  test 
of  truth  in  any  instance.  If  that  were  so,  then 
Christianity  must  go  by  the  board,  for  the  vast 
majority  of  the  human  race  do  not  profess  it. 
There  are  four  hundred  millions  of  Buddhists 
who  repudiate  it  with  absolute  ease  and  de- 
ligfht  ;  but  that  does  not  invalidate  its  truth  to 
anyone  who  believes  in  its  efficiency  as  a  rule 
of  life. 

These   characteristics   that    I   have   named : 


"  Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "  209 

the  right  to  free  inquiry — free  inquiry  as  a 
duty,  personal  religion  as  an  experience,  and 
the  absence  of  nervous  anxiety  to  add  to  the 
statistics  of  our  ecclesiastical  history,  make  us 
seem,  to  those  who  criticise,  people  who  are 
not  concerned  to  build  up. 

What  are  the  facts?  The  facts  are  that 
Unitarianism  builds  up  personal  responsibility, 
while  it  emphasises  personal  liberty.  Now, 
there  are  Unitarians  and  Unitarians.  There 
are  people  who  have  been  born  into  the  Unit- 
arian churches,  who  have  never  given  religion 
any  serious  thought  since.  I  do  not  know  what 
their  state  is.  Their  opinions  are  not  worth 
anything.  The  fact  that  they  were  born  under 
given  conditions  does  not  entitle  them  to  be 
heard.  Only  the  student  of  a  subject  is  fit  to 
speak  upon  it.  He  may  be  mistaken  even 
then  ;  but  at  least  he  has  given  the  matter  at- 
tention ;  he  has  focused  his  mind  upon  it.  I 
do  not  claim  that  all  Unitarians  are  saints, 
though  I  have  known  a  vast  number  who, 
tested  by  character  in  its  robuster  elements, 
were  so  pre-eminently  good,  that  if  they  had 
given  me  their  opinions  in  a  language  I  could 
not  understand,  and  when  it  was  interpreted 
to  me  would  have  been  found  to  be  a  doctrine 
of  which  I  had  never  heard,  I  should  still  have 


2IO  One  World  at  a  Time 

been  compelled  to  make  the  appeal  back  to 
the  rectitude  of  their  lives  and  the  beauty  of 
their  character,  and  say  :  "  That  is  the  vindica- 
tion of  what  I  fail  to  understand  in  terms  of 
speech."  I  have  been  with  people  of  our  faith 
in  dying,  in  disaster,  and  in  prosperity,  in  their 
delights  of  common  life  and  in  the  sadder  ex- 
periences of  our  common  history ;  and  I  say, 
not  simply  as  John  Wesley  did  of  the  early 
Methodists,  "  Our  people  die  well,"  but  that 
these  have  lived  so  well  I  cannot  think  of  them 
as  dead. 

In  the  building  up  of  personal  responsibil- 
ity and  personal  liberty,  we  have  necessarily 
pulled  down  the  traditions.  There  are  people 
for  whom  the  New  Testament  was  bound  in 
heaven  and  let  down  to  mortals,  to  put  it 
very  plainly  ;  and  they  require  you  to  believe 
every  line  of  it  or  else  be  charged  with 
destroying  it.  Now,  the  business  of  every  de- 
vout, inquiring  mind  is  to  open  it  up  ;  and 
what  seems  to  the  worm  that  has  been  hatched 
down  at  the  heart  of  a  rose,  when  the  rose 
unfolds  and  the  light  comes  into  it,  —  what 
seems  to  the  grub  a  pulling  down,  because  the 
petals  open  out  to  the  sun  and  its  poor  little 
squirminess  is  exposed  to  the  light,  to  the 
rose  seems  the  fulfilling  of  its  destiny,  and,  to 


'•Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "211 

the  gardener  who  discovers  the  worm,  his  op- 
portunity. The  business  of  the  inquiring  mind 
is  to  open  up  the  Scripture  ;  and  the  fact 
that  Unitarianism  devoted  itself  to  the  Higher 
Criticism,  keeping  up  with  it  at  every  advance, 
has  resulted  for  us  in  restoring  the  New 
Testament  to  the  use  of  thinking  minds,  in- 
stead of  having  it  repudiated  by  those  who 
found  parts  of  it  impossible  to  believe.  I 
will  give  an  illustration  :  Take  the  story  of 
Jesus  cursing  the  fig-tree.  If  that  were  true, 
I  should  have  to  let  the  character  of  Jesus  go. 
Nothing  he  could  do  after  that  would  restore 
it  to  me.  To  have  cursed  the  fig-tree  and 
withered  it,  even  if  it  were  given  to  any  being 
to  do  that  thing,  because  it  had  no  figs  on 
it  when  he  was  hungry,  would  have  forever 
deposed  him  from  the  leadership  of  men. 
No  creature  can  claim  to  lead  or  save  who 
is  kindled  to  ignoble  anger  by  personal  dis- 
appointment. I  have  no  trouble  in  saying  it 
never  happened.  It  is  the  business  of  people 
who  think  for  themselves  to  say  that.  When 
I  find  in  the  New  Testament  that  only  in 
the  preface  to  Luke's  Gospel  and  the  preface 
to  Matthew's  Gospel  is  the  abnormal  birth  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  referred  to, —  and  that  it  is 
not  known   to    Paul,  who  writes  the  earliest 


212  One  World  at  a  Time 

documents  in  the  New  Testament  record, —  I 
am  obliged  to  make  a  distinction  between  the 
divine  character  and  the  miraculous  birth. 
When  you  do  that,  for  these  people  who  say  you 
must  take  it  all  or  leave  it  all,  though  they  do 
not  do  that  with  any  other  literature  in  the  world, 
though  they  do  not  do  that  with  any  day's  diet  at 
the  table,  though  they  do  not  do  that  even  with 
the  characters  of  their  own  friends,  —  this  pro- 
cess of  inquiry,  of  personal  responsibility  and 
personal  liberty,  seems  to  be  pulling  down  and 
not  building  up.  I  will  venture  the  statement 
that  but  for  the  work  which  began  with  Semler 
in  1 790,  that  has  been  known  during  our  lifetime 
as  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the  Scripture,  the 
Bible  would  have  ceased  to  be  read,  as  a  book 
of  impossible  miracles  and  unworkable  ethics. 
It  is  because  students  have  discriminated  be- 
tween what  was  the  word  of  God  to  the 
human  soul  in  a  progressive  revelation,  and 
what  were  the  accidents  of  literature  in  a 
moving  procession  of  the  centuries,  that  the 
Bible  is  prized  to-day  as  never  before  by 
thinkino^  men. 

Still  further.  Unitarianism  not  only  insists 
upon  this  personal  liberty  and  constant  revela- 
tion, so  that  God  speaks  now  as  He  always 
has  spoken  to  the  listening  mind,  but  it  insists 


'*  Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  '*  213 

upon  a  personal  responsibility  which  requires 
no  atonement  outside  the  soul  itself.  Now, 
a  shudder  passes  over  the  evangelical  mind 
when  you  say  that.  They  say  you  have 
denied  the  Atonement.  You  cannot  deny  a 
thing  that  never  happened.  You  can  only 
deny  the  statement  that  it  did  happen.  I 
said  in  the  beginning  what  I  repeat  now. — 
we  have  never  pulled  down  a  single  essential 
element  that  went  to  the  making  of  human 
character,  or  to  the  vindication  of  the  truths  of 
history,  or  to  the  affirmation  of  the  facts  that 
lie  in  the  Ultimate  Reality  of  things.  All 
that  we  have  insisted  is,  that  you  shall  not 
write  out  a  new  code  with  every  generation, 
and  declare  that  unless  a  man  believes  that,  he 
is  to  be  consigned  to  condemnation  now  and 
eternally  lost.  This  difficulty  is  illustrated 
by  what  happens  in  the  Church  of  England. 
The  Athanasian  Creed  is  recited.  When 
they  have  recited  the  Athanasian  Creed, 
which  belongs  to  the  eighth  century,  they 
have  consigfned  themselves  to  eternal  con- 
demnation  for  having  previously  recited  the 
Nicene  Creed.  There  they  stand  —  in  the 
same  book,  recited  in  the  same  church,  and 
you  have  your  choice  on  which  terms  you  will 
go  to  hell.     We  insist  that  that  is  inconsistent 


214  One  World  at  a  Time 

with  personal  responsibility,  inconsistent  with 
salvation  which  is  sanative.  Salvation  is 
moral  health,  and  you  cannot  have  it  proceed 
outside  the  individual  soul.  All  the  thought 
of  the  ages  may  be  spent  in  providing  the 
instruments  of  salvation,  but  only  the  struggle 
of  soul  can  make  that  salvation  a  personal 
experience. 

Finally.  What  I  have  intimated  must  still 
further  be  enforced,  namely,  that  the  test  of 
religion  is  in  the  character  it  produces.  One 
of  the  most  entertaining  and  exasperating 
things  in  public  discussion  Is  that  your  an- 
tagonist will  continually  try  to  run  you  on 
a  siding  ;  so  that  when  you  say  that  the  test  of 
religion  is  in  the  character  that  it  produces,  the 
critic  immediately  responds,  "  Do  you  pretend 
to  say  that  the  orthodox  faiths  do  not  pro- 
duce good  character?"  That  is  what  they 
say  every  time,  you  can  count  upon  it  with 
absolute  certainty.  No,  that  is  not  meant. 
What  I  say  is  this  :  That  the  test  of  a  religion 
is  In  the  character  It  produces  by  virtue  of 
that  which  the  soul  got  out  of  it ;  and  it  is  not 
the  test  of  a  religion  as  to  the  character  it  pro- 
duces by  what  the  soul  carefully  excludes  and 
forgets  that  it  teaches.  That  is  the  situation 
of  our  evangelical  friends.     Mr.  Beecher  used 


*'  Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "215 

to  say,  twenty  years  ago  and  more,  that  he  be- 
lieved there  was  a  creed  in  the  church  safe, — 
a  Confession  of  Faith, — but,  having  lost  the 
combination,  he  preached  what  he  pleased,  and 
people  were  not  interested  in  distinctions  of 
theology  ;  they  believed  profoundly  what  they 
heard,  to  the  very  great  benefit  of  their  souls. 
Now,  when  a  commercial  theory  of  the  Atone- 
ment, which  makes  God  buy  back  children  He 
never  lost,  and  puts  the  sacrifice  of  their  sins 
upon  a  being  who  never  committed  them,  in 
order  that  they  may  escape  a  hell  which  He 
made,  and  be  relieved  of  the  temptations  of  a 
demon  who  could  not  have  grown  up  with 
God, — I  say,  when  that  theory  of  the  Atone- 
ment is  proposed  to  a  human  mind,  under 
conditions  evangelical,  and  good  character 
comes  under  those  conditions,  it  comes  in  spite 
of  a  theory  which  is  essentially  dishonest,  un- 
just, and  which  if  it  occurred  in  the  business 
walks  of  life  would  exclude  a  man  from  the 
world  of  trade  ;  because  it  proposes  a  fictitious 
condition,  to  be  relieved  by  a  dishonest  process. 
There  is  nothing  sacred  about  the  doctrine 
of  the  Atonement,  except  the  sacred  emotions 
which  are  associated  with  it.  It  is  only  as  old 
as  Anselm  in  the  eleventh  century.  It  was 
utterly  unknown  during  the  first  years  of  the 


2i6  One  World  at  a  Time 

Christian  Church.  It  has  no  place  in  the  New 
Testament.  But,  because  somebody  insists 
upon  it  with  determined  iteration,  it  has  be- 
come as  sacred  as  any  other  idol  that  has  often 
enough  been  shown  to  the  worshippers.  Now, 
I  say  that  anybody  who  wins  good  character 
out  of  that,  wins  it  in  spite  of  that  condition. 
There  are  many  doctrines  that  are  not  ger- 
mane, that  have  no  influence  whatever  upon 
character.  I  do  not  understand  why  a  person 
should  not  be  as  devout  and  godly  of  character 
believing  in  the  Trinity — which  is  a  proposition 
in  philosophy,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  re- 
ligion whatever — as  under  the  conditions  that 
we  represent  of  the  unity  of  God.  But  they 
cannot  be  philosophically  clear.  They  are  in 
some  confusion  when  they  pray.  For  even 
the  most  modified  theory  of  the  Trinity  as 
a  series  of  manifestations  has  its  difficulties. 
Those  are  difficulties  of  mind,  of  the  specul- 
ative faculty,  and  not  difficulties  of  character. 
I  insist,  that  the  test  of  a  religion  is  to  be 
found  in  the  character  it  produces  by  virtue 
of  what  is  believed.  The  Fatherhood  of  God, 
infinitely  fatherly;  the  sense  of  communion 
that  nothing  can  interrupt ;  the  experience  of 
heaven  here  and  now ;  the  consciousness  of 
the  forgiveness  of  sins,  which  has  been  pro- 


'*  Pulling  Down  and  Building  Up  "  217 

vided  for  between  the  soul  and  God,  with  no 
mediator  between, —  these  are  elements  that 
are  easily  transmuted  into  character,  for  their 
very  essence  involves  the  sense  of  personal 
responsibility. 


CHAPTER  X 
WHAT  HAS  BEEN  BUILT  UP 

Certain  things  have  been  built  up.  In  the 
first  place,  the  faith  we  contend  for  has 
built  up  the  courage  of  those  who  hold  it. 
If  I  were  asked  to  name  any  one  thing  that  is 
most  saving  to  human  life,  I  should  say  cour- 
age. A  discouraged  man  puts  the  enervation 
of  his  own  nature  into  his  work,  he  puts  the 
dulness  of  his  own  spirit  into  his  work.  His 
eye  is  dull.  The  work  of  God  cannot  be 
seen  with  eyes  as  dull  as  those  of  a  stale  fish. 
The  eye  must  be  purged  of  all  film,  all  ob- 
scurity, and  the  heart  must  be  true  to  every 
motion  of  the  spirit's  intention.  The  one 
thing  we  need  in  order  to  get  on  in  life  is  not 
simply  to  make  the  best  terms  that  we  can, 
but  to  compel  it  to  the  best  terms  that  we 
need ;  and  the  motto  that  I  saw  over  the 
door  of  George  MacDonald's  house  in  Old 
English,  "  Corage  :  God  mend  all  !  "  is  the 
motto    of    every    soul    that    is    imbued    with 

218 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up        219 

the  faith  that  we  profess.  This  courage  is 
based  first  of  all  on  the  fact  that  God  is  good, 
and  God's  world  is  a  good  world  to  be  in 
with  God ;  that  there  is  nothing  out  of  which 
God  can  be  driven  ;  that  I  cannot  even  by  my 
sins  escape  Him  ;  and  the  only  way  I  can  run  to 
ever  outrun  my  sin  or  my  sorrow  is  to  run 
to  Him.  And  what  the  child  feels  who  is  lost, 
and  works  its  way  through  the  labyrinth  of 
streets  and  finally  sees  that  it  is  near  home, 
every  soul  of  us  feels — that  we  are  not  far  from 
God  and  the  home  of  the  soul ;  that  God  is 
"  infinitely  Fatherly"  ;  that  **  there  is  no  place 
where  earth's  sorrows  are  more  felt  than 
up  in  Heaven  "  ;  that  the  goodness  of  God 
is  wide  "like  the  wideness  of  the  sea"  ;  and 
that  therefore,  instead  of  the  old,  diabolical, 
immoral,  vengeful  occupation  of  a  throne  out- 
side the  universe  by  a  God  who  watches  it  go, 
we  have  substituted  in  our  thinking  the  Fath- 
erhood of  God,  never  remote,  always,  as  Jesus 
said,  "seeking  those  to  worship  Him  who 
worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth."  It  is  a 
great  thing  to  dismiss  the  fear  of  God  in  this 
abject  sense  from  the  human  soul. 

More  than  this.  We  have  dismissed  the 
fear  of  the  destiny  of  man,  as  to  the  order  of 
man's  life.     There  are  two  things  that  disturb 


220  One  World  at  a  Time 

us.  The  first  is,  "  What  am  I  to  do  ?  "  The 
other  is,  "  What  is  to  become  of  me  ?"  And 
between  those  two  affrights,  all  their  life 
long  some  souls  have  been  held  in  bond- 
age. What  am  I  to  do  ?  How  can  I  work  out 
my  career  ?  I  often  find  in  the  ministry  of  re- 
ligion people  who  are  saying,  "  How  am  I  to 
get  on  ? "  What  a  useless  question  for  a  hu- 
man soul  !  There  is  nothing  to  be  done  in 
this  world  about  getting  on,  except  to  be  fit  to 
get  on.  Any  human  being  who  knows  any 
one  thing  well  that  anybody  else  wants  to 
know,  has  an  audience  and  a  purpose  and  an 
opportunity  ;  and  any  human  being  that  can 
do  anything  well  that  anybody  wants  to  have 
done,  is  sure  of  occupation.  And  so  we  have, 
as  fundamental  to  our  thinking,  the  idea 
that  every  man's  life  is  a  plan  of  God  ;  that 
it  is  part  of  the  order  of  nature,  if  you  please, 
which  is  just  the  same  thing  as  its  being  the 
plan  of  God.  For  this  is  not  an  atheistic 
world  ;  it  is  not  a  world  without  God  ;  it  is 
not  a  world  in  which  any  part  of  our  work  can 
be  done  alone.  The  great  purpose  of  life  is  to 
do  with  contentment  whatever  the  Divine  Will 
appoints.  It  is  of  no  concern  at  all  what  you 
do  ;  but  the  manner  and  style  of  doing  it  are  of 
great  concern.    I  am  only  concerned  that  it  shall 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up         221 

be  something  that  shall  be  creditable  to  my 
Maker.  I  am  more  concerned,  as  every  loyal 
subject  of  a  king  must  be,  that  it  shall  be  to  the 
honour  of  the  king  than  that  it  shall  be  felicit- 
ous or  comfortable  or  favourable  to  the  sub- 
ject. The  honour  of  the  Maker  is  in  the 
hands  of  His  creatures  ;  and  the  dreadful 
thing  about  sin  is  not  simply  that  it  is  sin- 
ful, not  at  all  that  it  shall  be  punished, — it 
ought  to  be,  and  no  noble  man  who  sins,  even 
by  mistake  or  indirection,  would  wish  to 
escape  his  punishment,  or  have  anybody  else 
pay  his  debt, — the  dreadful  thing  about  sin  is 
that  a  being  who  was  made  in  the  image  of 
God,  and  into  whose  keeping  God  put  His 
work  and  His  will,  should  be  disloyal — the 
worst  word  in  the  language.  He  can  never 
come  to  the  "  Land  o'  the  Leal,"  because  he 
is  a  traitor  to  the  very  conditions  of  his  birth 
and  being.  That  is  the  fearful  thing  about 
sin,  that  the  thing  God  made  is  a  standing 
reproach  to  his  Maker.  Destiny  is  taken  out  of 
the  realm  of  fear  and  put  into  the  keeping 
of  God ;  and  this  building  up  of  the  courage 
of  life  is  one  of  the  things  we  have  done  for 
those  who  accept  our  faith. 

We  have  done  another  thing.     With  no  in- 
vidious purpose  whatever,   I    must  still  insist 


222  One  World  at  a  Time 

upon  the  fact  that  the  other  churches  have 
been  trying  to  make  a  nice  adjustment  be- 
tween the  things  they  thought  were  true  and 
the  things  that  the  scientific  inquiry  of  the 
world  has  proved  to  be  true.  While  the 
churches  have  been  trying  to  see  how  little 
they  could  allow  to  the  natural  world  and  to 
scientific  and  philosophic  inquiry,  the  Unitar- 
ian ministry  and  laity  have  been  united  in  one 
single  inquiry, — "Is  it  true?"  Proven  true, 
it  becomes  part  of  our  gospel.  Demonstrated 
true,  though  it  reverse  all  our  opinions,  we 
must  accept  it,  because  there  cannot  be  two 
antagonistic  truths  in  God's  world.  What  is 
theologically  true  must  be  true  in  the  scientific 
sense  as  well.  There  cannot  be  a  true  world 
and  a  false  theology  which  can  be  made  to 
agree.  We  are  pledged  to  the  advance  of  sci- 
ence. We  do  not  say  that  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution has  been  finally  proven  ;  but  it  is  to-day 
the  working  hypothesis  of  the  whole  scientific 
world,  and  it  is  our  working  hypothesis  as  ap- 
plied to  theology,  to  the  Bible,  to  human  life  ; 
that  is,  we  examine  a  text  of  Scripture  by  the 
scientific  method,  just  as  you  would  examine 
the  specific  gravity  of  a  metal,  or  would  apply 
a  physiological  test  or  a  chemical  test,  or 
test  by  the  microscope  or  telescope.     When 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up        223 

we  employ  the  scientific  process  we  mean  that 
things  are  tested  by  a  procession  of  thought 
from  the  fact  to  the  conclusion,  not  from  a 
supposition  back  to  the  fact.  The  scientific 
method  is  applied  in  religion.  The  scientific 
method  is  the  only  safe  method  to  apply.  So 
we  have  welcomed  science.  I  do  not  believe 
there  has  been  a  man  of  us,  in  all  these  one  hun- 
dred years  that  have  gone  by,  that  has  written  a 
single  book  or  preached  a  single  sermon  or  said 
a  single  word  to  reconcile  science  to  religion. 
We  have  been  reconciling  theology  to  the 
facts  of  the  universe,  because  theology  is  only 
the  more  or  less  scientific  statement  of  our 
conclusions  concerning  facts.  Every  man 
stands  fronting  two  sets  of  phenomena  in  the 
world  :  one  set,  the  phenomena  of  the  mate- 
rial universe  ;  the  other,  the  phenomena  of  the 
spiritual  universe.  Why  should  he  suppose 
for  a  moment  that  he  can  adjust  himself  to  the 
material  universe  in  terms  consistent  with  his 
well-being  as  a  creature  without  also,  by  the 
same  endeavour  and  purpose,  adjusting  himself 
to  the  spiritual  universe  as  a  child  of  God  ? 
The  two  things  go  together,  and  the  separa- 
tion of  them  has  been  the  reproach  of  the 
churches.  Take  any  group  assembled  to  dis- 
cuss the  revision   of   a    Confession   of   Faith. 


2  24  One  World  at  a  Time 

With  the  best  intentions  in  the  world,  with  ab- 
solute sincerity,  with  all  the  honour  of  the 
Church  in  their  keeping,  why  should  there  be 
any  question  among  them  as  to  an  ancient 
document,  if  it  can  be  stated  in  terms  level  to 
the  facts  of  modern  life  ?  I  believe  in  the  con- 
tinuity of  Christian  thought,  and  these  ancient 
formulae  are  part  of  the  history  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical development  of  the  world  ;  but  they 
have  no  sanctity  except  the  sanctity  which  went 
into  the  lives  that  made  them  and  the  sincerity 
of  purpose  that  produced  them  ;  and  I  should 
think  that  a  group  of  men  of  God,  gathered 
together  over  the  question  as  to  whether  they 
should  revise  the  formulae  of  religion  in  the 
terms  of  modern  thought  and  the  necessities 
of  the  modern  mind,  would  aspire  to  just  one 
thing,  and  that  is,  to  be  for  their  generation  as 
sincere  as  the  people  that  made  the  formulae 
they  are  investigating  ;  and  if  they  were  as  sin- 
cere as  that  they  would  give  us  a  different  thing. 
The  absolute  sincerity  of  the  Fathers  is  unques- 
tioned. The  absolute  sincerity  of  the  Consti- 
tutional Convention  of  1787  is  unquestioned  ; 
but  that  did  not  hinder  the  passage  of  the  Fif- 
teenth Amendment  to  the  Constitution,  that 
gave  four  millions  of  slaves  their  rights  as 
citizens.     And  yet  there  were  people  in  the 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up        225 

days  following  the  Civil  War  who  talked  about 
the  invasion  of  the  Constitution,  as  though  it 
were  to  be  thought  of  in  the  same  moment 
with  the  invasion  of  human  rights  !  When 
you  erect  a  document  into  a  fetich,  you  are 
simply  in  a  retarded  state  of  spiritual  develop- 
ment ;  between  the  lower  orders  of  civilisation, 
with  a  fetich  or  an  amulet  or  a  totem,  there  is 
not  much  to  choose  as  compared  with  those 
who  take  a  document  or  a  statement  which,  in 
its  day,  was  a  very  Ark  of  the  Covenant  to  sin- 
cere souls,  and  who  say :  "  For  all  time  this  is 
to  abide.  The  human  mind  has  learned  many 
a  thing,  but  concerning  these  things  it  has 
stood  absolutely  still."  That  is  an  inconceiv- 
able state  of  mind  to  us  ;  and,  whilst  we  always 
assume  the  sincerity  of  those  who  hold  it,  we 
lament  the  loss  of  time  and  spiritual  power. 

We  have  also  built  up,  not  only  this  courage 
of  the  human  race,  as  far  as  they  have  heard 
and  believed  our  word,  we  not  only  hold  this 
open-minded  attitude  toward  the  progress  of 
the  human  mind,  but  we  have  insisted  upon 
the  dignity  of  human  nature.  When  Dr. 
Channing,  in  18 19,  in  Baltimore,  set  the  dignity 
of  human  nature  over  against  the  total  de- 
pravity  of  man,  challenging  the  doctrine  of 
total  depravity  of  the  race  by  the  doctrine  of 


226  One  World  at  a  Time 

the  dignity  and  divinity  of  human  nature,  it 
was  as  notable  as  any  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence ever  penned  ;  for  it  was  the  statement 
that  God  had  not  made  a  thing  of  which  He 
need  be  ashamed.  Now  of  the  doctrine  of 
total  depravity  you  say,  "  Nobody  believes  it." 
Well,  perhaps  not,  for  himself.  I  have  never 
met  a  man  who  thought  he  was  totally  de- 
praved. I  have  seen  some  people  who  gave 
ample  signs  of  it  to  the  external  ohserver, — 
abnormal  specimens,  distorted  and  morbid  de- 
velopments,— but  those  we  relegate  at  once  to 
the  field  of  imperfect  development  or  misdi- 
rected development.  So  I  suppose  that  no 
one  for  himself  or  for  anybody  he  loved  ever 
believed  in  total  depravity.  And  we  insist 
that  the  field  of  the  world  cannot  be  planted 
with  seed  that  is  rotten  to  the  core.  Farmers 
are  beginning  to  put  their  seed  into  the  ground 
and  to  get  ready  their  gardens  for  the  summer, 
and  they  are  throwing  out  of  the  heap  of  their 
seed  potatoes  every  one  that  is  rotten  to  the 
core.  You  cannot  grow  a  crop  of  any  kind — 
men,  or  any  other  crop — out  of  stuff  that  is 
totally  depraved.  And  when  the  Church  de- 
clared its  belief  in  total  depravity,  and  then 
started  to  live  up  to  its  faith  in  total  depravity, 
it  reproached  God  and  entered   upon   a   dis- 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up        227 

pensatlon  of  despair.  And  here  was  the  ter- 
rible thing  that  happened :  they  began  to 
think  meanly  of  God,  because  they  thought  so 
meanly  of  man.  The  rescue  of  the  character 
of  God  has  to  be  achieved  in  the  terms  of  the 
dignity  of  man.  A  Being  that  made  man  so 
that  He  could  not  save  him,  or  must  enter  into 
an  immoral  contract  to  save  him,  which  all 
theories  of  the  Atonement  in  some  aspect  are 
liable  to  involve, — the  Being  who  is  thus  limited 
has  lost  more  from  His  own  character  in  the 
minds  of  His  worshippers,  than  man  has  lost  of 
character  by  the  formulated  statement  of  his 
depravity.  We  have  insisted  upon  the  dignity 
of  human  nature, — that  we  are  children  of  the 
great  God  and  we  belong  to  Him  ;  that  He 
cannot  get  rid  of  us;  that  He  brought  us  into 
being  and  is  accountable  for  us ;  that  our 
business  is  to  grow  into  His  image  and  be  like 
Him;  that  moral  health  is  salvation;  and  to 
conform  to  the  image  of  His  son,  to  the  like- 
ness of  his  moral  qualities, — this  constitutes 
the  Atonement.  And  this  conviction  we  have 
built  up  in  spite  of  every  effort  to  the  con- 
trary ;  so  that  in  all  the  churches  to-day,  the 
doctrine  of  a  cureless  hell,  of  an  inextinguish- 
able retribution,  has  disappeared,  except  in  very 
remote  districts  and  very  uninformed  minds. 


228  One  World  at  a  Time 

The  Universalist  Church  was  built  upon  the 
protest  against  the  doctrine  of  irremediable 
ruin.  The  Unitarians  took  the  other  side  of 
the  same  proposition,  and  claimed  that  the 
character  of  God  forbade  the  ruin  of  man  ;  so 
that  when  Charles  Carroll  Everett  uttered  the 
phrase  which  has  passed  into  a  commonplace 
in  our  thinking,  that  "Human  nature  is  not 
ruined,  but  incomplete,"  it  carried  immediate 
conviction.  Is  it  not  evident  that  on  that 
basis  we  are  ready  to  begin  any  work  and 
do  anything  for  the  betterment  of  our  kind  ? 
But  if  humanity  be  totally  depraved,  then 
the  sooner  it  is  snuffed  out  the  better.  You 
cannot  keep  an  unremedied  and  contagious 
disease  in  contact  with  the  race  without  hurt- 
ing it ;  and  if  that  be  the  condition  of  God's 
creatures,  there  is  no  remedy  that  we  know 
except  extinction  ;  that  would  make  it  safe  for 
the  Elect ;  and  that  was  the  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination reduced  to  its  crudest  form  ; — if 
that  be  true,  then  I  want  to  go  with  the  other 
folk.  I  have  been  spending  the  thirty  years 
of  my  ministry  trying  to  look  out  for  the 
"  under  dog "  in  the  fight,  for  the  man  who 
was  not  quite  up  to  the  mark,  and  for  the 
man  who  needed  help  and  teaching  ;  and  if 
God   has   just   a   few  who  are  to  be  saved, 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up        229 

then  I  would  wish  to  go  with  the  crowd. 
But  we  do  not  have  to  come  to  that  conclu- 
sion. The  dignity  of  human  nature  is  shown 
in  every  aspect  of  human  life.  In  the  ministry 
of  the  last  thirty  years,  surprises  as  to  the 
dignity  of  human  nature  have  come  upon  me 
again  and  again  ;  from  the  most  unexpected 
sources  the  beauty  of  human  life  has  appeared, 
as  when  one  stands  surprised  at  the  radiant 
beauty  of  a  cactus-bloom  that  grows  out  of  the 
thorny  plant.  The  dignity  and  divinity  of  hu- 
man nature  we  insist  upon  ;  and  it  were  better 
to  have  human  nature  divine  in  character  and 
no  God  in  the  universe  ;  the  ideals  which  it  fol- 
lows true,  and  no  God  to  match  them,  if  that 
philosophic  proposition  were  possible,  than 
to  have  a  Beingf  of  whom  it  could  be  said,  as 
Browning  wrote : 

"  The  loving  worm  within  his  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  God 
Within  his  worlds." 

We  are  as  much  concerned  with  saving  the 
character  of  God  as  with  glorifying  and  digni- 
fying the  nature  of  man. 

The  Unitarian  faith  has  built  up  another 
thing,  the  truth  of  Inspiration  from  God  ;  and 
thus  it  has  built  up  not  itself  alone,  but  has 
joined  the  great  company  of   those  who  are 


230  One  World  at  a  Time 

building  up  a  confidence  in  the  revelation 
of  God's  Word.  We  do  not  restrict  it  to 
the  Bible  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament. 
There  are  world-scriptures.  The  great  eth- 
nic scriptures  of  the  world  are  to  be  con- 
sulted. In  my  own  judgment  as  a  student, 
they  are  not  to  be  compared  in  richness 
and  power  with  the  ethical  passion  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  and  the  Christian  Script- 
ures. But  they  are  deliverances  of  God  to 
the  Hindu,  to  the  Mohammedan,  to  the 
Zoroastrian,  and  the  great  company  of  those 
of  whom  it  is  said,  "  He  hath  made  of  one 
blood  all  the  nations  of  the  earth ;  that  they 
should  seek  God,  if  haply  they  might  feel 
after  him  and  find  him,  though  he  is  not  far 
from  each  one  of  us."  We  have  declared  for 
that  study  of  the  Scripture,  that  "  Higher  Crit- 
icism," which  has  practically  restored  the  study 
of  the  Bible  to  the  intelligent  mind  of  man 
and  has  made  it  possible  for  him  to  inquire, 
not  for  the  infallible  Word  of  God,  as  you 
would  go  to  a  book  of  infallible  statutes  ;  but 
as  to  what  God  said  in  the  ancient  time  to 
His  children  ;  he  is  thus  encouraged  to  wait 
and  listen  for  what  God  shall  say  to  him. 
And  that  is  the  doctrine  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment.    In  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  we  read  : 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up        231 

**  God,  having  of  old  time  spoken  unto  the 
fathers  in  the  prophets  by  divers  portions  and 
in  divers  manners,  hath  at  the  end  of  these 
days  spoken  unto  us  in  his  Son."  And  this 
element  of  devotion  to  the  life  of  Christ  as 
the  revealer  in  terms  of  humanhood  of  the 
life  of  God,  is  pre-eminent  amongst  us. 

Finally.  We  have  built  up  character  and 
practical  achievement.  It  would  be  a  stupid 
man  or  woman  who  would  turn  from  these 
pages  and  say  that  I  declared  that  there  was 
no  character  formed  by  the  other  faiths.  That 
needs  no  answer  ;  it  is  simply  not  true.  What 
I  say  is  that  the  character  that  is  formed  in 
spite  of  these  beliefs  is  formed  under  diffi- 
culties that  we  whose  character  is  formed  be- 
cause of  our  beliefs,  do  not  have  to  encounter. 
If  I  have  to  love  God  in  spite  of  a  cureless 
hell,  I  am  in  a  very  different  position  intel- 
lectually and  morally  from  loving  God  because 
of  an  unfathomable  mercy.  If  I  have  to 
follow  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  a  composite  being 
made  up  of  God  and  man  in  terms  I  cannot 
define,  whose  human  nature  presents  no  valid- 
ity for  me,  because  it  is  a  human  nature  I  do 
not  possess,  and  whose  divine  inspiration  pre- 
sents no  validity  to  me,  because  it  is  different 
from   anything    that    I    can    have, — then    my 


232  One  World  at  a  Time 

attitude  toward  him  as  the  leader  and  helper 
of  my  life  must  be  entirely  different  from 
what  it  is  now,  when  the  processes  we  call  di- 
vine are  translated  in  terms  of  an  absolute 
humanhood,  simple  humanity,  pure  humanity, 
daily  living  as  a  means  of  learning  the  Beat- 
itudes. So  that  when  I  say  we  build  up 
character,  I  mean  to  say  this  :  that  we  do  not 
ask  a  human  being  to  go  through  the  con- 
vulsions of  some  fictitious  repentance  for  sins 
he  never  committed  and  lay  claim  upon  an 
atonement  which  can  only  save  if  the  field 
of  its  operation  is  in  another  mind  and  not 
in  his  own,  and  then  to  be  adopted  into  the 
family  of  God,  whose  child  he  always  was, 
and  to  have  a  hope  of  Heaven  based  upon 
a  work  done  for  him  by  the  Saviour  of  the 
world,  and  to  think  that  part  of  his  joy  there 
will  be  in  seeing  the  sufferings  of  the  damned. 
If  that  is  my  attitude,  then  any  character  I 
get  in  that  process  I  get  in  spite  of  it ;  and 
it  is  a  tribute  to  the  essential  soundness  of 
human  nature  that  such  beautiful  character, 
such  glorified  character  is  possible  to  those 
who  believe  all  those  things.  There  is  some- 
thing in  human  nature  that  you  cannot  kill 
by  theologic  statement.  There  is  something 
in  human    nature   that    resists  the  poison  of 


What  Has  Been  Built  Up         22,^ 

vicious  suggestion,  just  as  there  is  something 
in  every  man  and  woman  that  leads  him  and 
her  to  go  through  a  vicious  world  untouched 
by  its  sin  and  uncorrupted  by  its  influence. 
We  build  up  character  in  the  terms  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  of  the  dignity  of 
human  nature  and  by  the  direct  approach 
of  the  soul  to  God,  unmediated  and  alone,  and 
this  we  call  practical  religion. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HOW  CAN  RELIGION  BE  TAUGHT? 

SOME  confusion  must  necessarily  arise  in 
any  contemplative  mind  when  the  word 
religion  is  pronounced ;  because  the  religions 
are  many,  and  religion  is  but  one.  The 
churches  are  many,  and  there  has  been  a  battle 
of  the  churches  in  order  that  only  one  may  be 
left.  For  it  would  seem  that  there  could  be 
no  other  motive  for  ecclesiastical  contention, 
unless  it  were  to  kill  off  the  remainder  and 
have  the  survival  of — the  one  that  was  left ;  I 
cannot  say  "  the  fittest,"  because  the  contention 
in  which  they  were  engaged  was  not  fit  for  the 
Church  of  the  living  God.  So  some  confusion 
always  must  appear  in  a  contemplative  mind 
when  the  word  religion  is  uttered.  It  sees 
tribal  religions  which  are  bounded  by  the  peri- 
phery of  the  tribe's  own  existence.  It  opens 
the  Scripture  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  finds 
that  Israel  passed  through  three  distinct  phases 
of  its  sense  of  God.     There  was  the  time  when 

3^4 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught  ?    235 

Yahweh — Jehovah — was  only  a  tribal  deity. 
There  was  the  time  when  he  was  the  great 
Deity, — tribal  still,  but  greater  than  all  the 
rest,  and  subduing  them  unto  his  own  rule  ; 
and  there  was  the  final  conception  of  God  as 
the  Lord  of  the  whole  earth.  There  were  also 
adumbrations  of  what  we  now  hold  to  be  uni- 
versal religion  ;  that  is,  religion  which,  under 
all  its  aspects,  is  one  in  essence.  As  we  say  of 
Nature,  that  there  is  but  one  energy  and  all 
forces  are  but  modes  of  its  manifestation,  and 
count  it  now  an  axiom  to  say  that ;  so  in  re- 
ligion we  say  there  is  but  one  religion,  and  all 
religions  are  modes  of  its  manifestation. 

So  we  come  to  feel  that  a  definition  of  re- 
ligion is  necessary.  We  turn  to  the  great  ex- 
ponents of  the  root  thoughts  of  the  human 
mind,  and  we  come  upon  such  a  definition  as 
this  of  Goethe  :  "  All  religions  have  one  aim, 
— to  make  man  accept  the  inevitable."  But 
there  is  no  delight  in  that ;  and  if  there  is  any 
purpose  in  religion,  it  must  be  to  add  zest  to 
life  by  putting  life  into  right  relations,  so  that 
that  which  belongs  to  it  shall  come  to  it ;  and 
that  power  of  reserve  shall  be  in  it,  that  not  only 
stoically  accepts  the  inevitable,  but  splendidly 
prepares  for  the  next  stage  in  life's  develop- 
ment.    So  that  Goethe's  definition  that  "  All 


236  One  World  at  a  Time 

religions  have  one  aim, — to  make  man  accept 
the  inevitable,"  does  not  provide  for  develop- 
ment ;  it  provides  only  for  defence  ;  and  if  I  am 
simply  in  the  attitude  of  defending  myself 
against  the  gods,  then  I  am  in  a  very  primitive 
form  of  religious  thought.  For  that  is  one  of 
its  early  aspects.  The  gods  are  inimical  to 
human  joy,  and  the  purpose  of  being  on  terms 
with  them  is  not  to  let  them  have  their  way 
with  me.  Therefore  that  cannot  be  a  defini- 
tion of  religion,  for  it  does  not  provide  for  de- 
light and  for  development. 

Frederic  Harrison's  statement  is,  that  "  Re- 
ligion is  summed  up  in  duty."  But  I  can  have 
no  duty  to  God.  God  is  the  source  of  every 
aspect  of  duty  in  me.  His  life  would  go  on  if  I 
were  utterly  regardless  of  Him.  Not  so  the 
life  of  my  fellow.  It  does  not  go  on  unless  I 
help  it.  Therefore,  in  this  definition,  you 
must  separate  religion  from  ethics.  It  is  not 
summed  up  in  duty.  It  is  not  even  summed 
in  love  that  is  without  duty,  and  it  certainly 
cannot  be  measured  by  duty  without  love. 

Or  again,  with  the  deference  that  we  feel  to- 
ward everything  that  John  Morley  writes,  we 
read  this  definition  in  his  estimate  of  what  re- 
ligion is  :  "  By  holiness  do  we  not  mean  some- 
thing different  from  virtue  ?     It  is  not  the  same 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught?    237 

as  duty.  Still  less  is  it  the  same  as  religious 
belief.  It  is  the  name  of  the  inner  grace  of 
nature,  an  instinct  of  the  soul,  by  which,  though 
knowing  earthly  appetites  and  passions,  the 
spirit,  purifying  itself  by  itself,  and  independent 
of  reason,  argument,  and  the  struggles  of  the 
will,  dwells  in  loving,  patient,  and  confident 
communion  with  the  seen  and  the  unseen 
good."  Now  there  is  much,  very  much,  of 
truth  in  that.  It  is  beautifully  stated.  It  is 
fine.  But  it  is  just  a  little  too  fine.  For  it  is 
abstruse,  involved,  prolix,  and  cannot  be  ex- 
plained to  the  uneducated  ;  and  any  definition 
of  religion  that  cannot  be  explained  to  the 
least  instructed  cannot  be  explained  anywhere 
satisfactorily.  The  Bowery  must  have  a  de- 
finition, as  well  as  the  upper  ranges  of  what  we 
vainly  and  idly  call  "  society." 

There  is  also  this  difficulty  with  Mr.  Mor- 
ley's  definition,  that  he  says  religion  is  in- 
dependent of  reason  ;  whereas  reason  is  the 
supreme  court  before  which  it  is  tried.  If  it 
is  not  rational,  then  it  is  not  for  rational  be- 
ings. We  can  no  longer  say  in  one  mood  of 
Tertullian,  "  I  believe  it  because  it  is  impossi- 
ble." We  say  rather  in  the  other  mood  of 
Tertullian,  "  The  soul  divines  what  is  divine." 
It  is  said  by   Mr.    Morley   "  that  holiness   is 


2i2>  One  World  at  a  Time 

independent  of  the  struggles  of  the  will." 
But  the  struggle  of  the  will  is  part  of  holiness 
itself.  It  is  not  a  temperature  that  comes 
upon  you  without  sharing  in  the  will.  It  is 
not  a  mere  condition  of  temperament,  even, 
in  which  the  will  has  no  part.  So  I  think  we 
must  examine  a  little  more  closely  as  to  what 
religion  is  before  we  can  say  how  it  may  be 
taught. 

I  call  your  attention,  therefore,  to  three 
stages,  briefly  expressed,  which  must  enter  as 
contributory  to  the  conception  of  religion  at 
all.  The  first  is  the  sense  of  dependence. 
This  may  be  expressed  as  "  Man  and  God," — 
the  sense  of  obligation.  I  can  have  no  duty 
toward  God,  but  I  have  a  duty  from  God  to- 
ward the  other  man.  The  race  passes  from  its 
childhood  to  its  adolescence,  in  which,  as  in 
the  individual,  egotism  is  replaced  by  altruism, 
and  the  love  of  self  is  followed  by  the  love 
of  the  other.  When  we  get  to  the  great 
"  Other,"  who  is  God,  the  original  "  Other," 
the  prototype,  the  archetypal  pattern  of  all 
that  is,  then  we  find  ourselves  in  a  realm  of 
dependence  upon  God  as  source,  and  the 
aspect  of  religion  cannot  be  avoided  that,  It 
consists  in  a  relation  of  dependence  of  man 
upon   God.     For   instance :  the   man  who   is 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught  ?    239 

so  trivial  or  superficial  as  to  say  that  there  is 
no  God ;  the  man  who  has  not  read  much  in 
the  last  twenty  years  ;  who  has  made  no  in- 
telligent study  of  physical  science  ;  who  is  not 
familiar  with  the  natural  world  ;  who  there- 
fore has  not  passed  that  period  known  as 
"philosophical  atheism";  that  man,  by  the 
very  struggle  to  be  independent  and  alone, 
gives  a  negative  argument  for  his  dependence, 
by  the  struggle  it  costs  him  to  reach  his  inde- 
pendent attitude.  So  the  sense  of  depend- 
ence is  elementary  to  religion  ;  but  it  makes 
no  provision  for  an  enlarged  experience,  and 
most  of  all  it  makes  no  provision  for  an  unex- 
pected crisis,  which,  unless  the  soul  be  related 
to  God,  it  is  conscious  of  bearing  alone.  Our 
lives  are  a  succession  of  catastrophes  if  we 
are  alone ;  they  are  a  succession  of  experi- 
ences if  we  are  bound  up  in  the  bundle  of  life 
with  Him.  To  be  alone  would  be  a  tragedy 
in  life's  catastrophes. 

There  is  a  second  condition  contributory  to 
religion.  Not  only  must  there  be  the  sense 
of  dependence,  which  may  be  expressed  as 
"  Man  and  God,"  but  there  must  be  the 
sense  of  relation,  which  may  be  expressed  as 
"  Man  like  God."  The  effort  of  religion  grow- 
ing out  of  dependence   is   to   build  a  bridge 


240  One  World  at  a  Time 

between  man  and  God,  or  to  run  a  tunnel,  a 
subway,  under  the  superficial  aspects  of  life, 
by  which  there  is  a  means  of  communication 
between  us  and  God.  This  rises  at  last  to 
the  conception  that  not  only  am  I  dependent 
upon  God  because  I  am  helpless ;  but  I  am 
related  to  God  because  I  am  like  Him  ;  I  share 
His  nature.  In  the  fourth  century,  Athanasius 
made  a  statement  which  was  afterward  hard- 
ened into  dogma,  instead  of  allowing  it  to 
remain  fluent  as  poetry  ;  he  declared  that 
"  The  Son  is  not  of  like  substance  with  the 
Father,  but  the  Son  is  of  the  same  substance 
with  the  Father "  ;  he  had  a  great  revelation 
of  the  fact  that  there  is  but  one  ground  of 
being  in  the  world,  and  that  no  son  can  ever 
be  other  than  of  the  same  substance  with  the 
father.  So  when  Jesus  says  in  his  splendid 
phrase,  "  I  and  my  Father  are  one,"  he  is  not 
stating  a  mathematical  identity ;  he  is  stating 
a  moral  coalescence  ;  he  is  stating  just  what  all 
the  prismatic  rays  are  stating,  divided  into 
their  rainbow  hues  through  the  great  primordial 
colours  ;  suddenly  the  prism  is  taken  away,  and 
you  stand  in  white  light.  It  is  optical  coalesc- 
ence ;  it  is  the  coalescence  of  colours.  "  I 
and  my  Father  are  one  "  is  the  statement  of  a 
relation    that  may  be  expressed,  whether  by 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught?    241 

Christ  or  by  any  humblest  follower  of  his,  or 
any  meditative  soul  that  never  heard  of  him, 
as  "  Man  with  God."  That  is  essential  to 
religion. 

The  third  condition  contributory  to  religion 
is,  not  only  dependence,  or  man  and  God ; 
not  only  relation,  as  man  with  God  ;  but  a 
sense  of  common  purpose,  namely,  "  Man  for 
God,"  as  the  instrument  of  His  manifestation, 
as  the  medium  in  which  He  works.  Does  the 
sculptor  take  the  clay  ;  does  the  painter  take 
the  pigments  ;  does  the  musician  wish  for  his 
instrument  ;  does  the  great  violin-maker  say 
God  could^  not  make  it  without  him  ?  So  in 
every  aspect  of  life  the  sense  of  common 
purpose  is  seen.  "  We  are  workers  together 
with  God."  We  are  not  only  His  husbandry, 
as  Paul  says  ;  we  are  not  only  His  building  ; 
we  are  not  only  the  product  of  His  creative 
power  ;  not  only  so,  but  He  never  has  stopped 
creating,  has  never  got  done  with  what  He 
was  doing  ;  and  He  has  left  us  some  little 
fragments  of  work  that  we  may  do,  so  that  we 
may  not  be  idle  in  a  world  which  is  not  yet 
done.  If  the  universe  is  not  yet  finished,  it 
behooves  us  to  have  a  share  in  the  making 
of  it.  Every  shiver  of  an  earthquake  is  test- 
imony  to    the   cooling    of   a   planet   that  has 


242  One  World  at  a  Time 

not  yet  cooled  enough  for  man's  safety.  We 
have  our  contribution  to  make  ;  and  religion 
that  is  not  "Man/brGod"  has  missed  one 
essential  element  in  it. 

The  first  contribution,  Man  and  God,  which 
takes  the  form  of  dependence,  is  expressed 
in  the  statement  made  by  a  woman  who  was 
talking  to  a  friend  a  little  while  ago.  One 
said  to  the  other,  "  Why  do  you  go  to  such 
a  church,  where  the  mythological  aspect  of 
the  service  certainly  affronts  your  reason  ?  " 
Her  friend  answered :  "  I  go  there  when  I 
want  to  bite  the  dust ;  because  every  con- 
dition of  the  service  implies  that  God  is 
everything  and  man  nothing, — a  mere  insect, 
ephemeral  in  to-day's  radiance,  floating  in  the 
sunshine  of  the  divine  outpouring."  That  was 
the  impression  the  service  made  upon  her 
mind  ;  and  so  when  she  got  into  an  abnormal 
state  of  continued  repentance,  a  kind  of  serial 
repentance  that  is  "  continued  in  our  next 
issue,"  she  went  to  that  service  because  she 
wanted  to  "bite  the  dust."  That  is  primitive 
religion  devising  mythology  to  satisfy  its  own 
sense  of  dependence. 

The  second  contribution  Is  found  in  the 
higher  aspects  of  religion.  It  is  found,  as  I 
have  Intimated,  In  the   life    of    Christ,  whose 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught  ?    243 

"  great  renunciation  "  is  as  real  as  that  of 
Gotama  Buddha ;  greater  indeed,  for  sweeter 
and  higher  and  more  full  of  joy — the  great 
renunciation  of  Jesus  was  as  full  of  depend- 
ence on  God  as  one  can  conceive  :  and  yet 
it  was  the  statement  that  all  union  with  the 
Ultimate  Divine  was  meant  to  be  a  prepara- 
tion for  carrying  out  the  divine  Ideal  which 
that  union  had  procured.  Brought  into  the 
circle  of  the  Divine  Presence,  "  thinking 
God's  thoughts  after  Him,"  there  grows  up 
In  the  soul  a  divine  Ideal.  I  must  realise 
It,  and  make  It  plain  In  the  terms  of  com- 
mon life  ;  and  so  you  get  to  the  third  element, 
Man  for  God. 

The  soul  Is  dependent,  as  I  have  implied, 
for  inspiration,  not  for  rescue.  For  religion 
Is  not  a  process  of  Insurance.  The  Being  who 
could  devise  in  the  human  soul  a  plan  by 
which  it  was  to  be  Insured  against  Himself 
would  require  to  take  out  a  policy  that  would 
cover  the  Infinite ;  for  nothing  under  that 
aspect  would  require  so  complete  an  Insurance 
as  God.  That  would  be  the  terrible  thing 
about  It,  that  the  smallest  of  all  God's  senti- 
ent and  rational  creatures  being  at  risk  from 
the  Being  that  made  him  would  be  an  Im- 
putation directly  upon  the  Being  Who  made 


244  One  World  at  a  Time 

him  as  being  non-moral,  or  immoral.  That  is 
our  protest.  We  are  not  dependent  upon 
God  simply  for  rescue,  but  for  inspiration. 
We  look  to  Him  for  revelation  ;  we  want  to 
have  Him  made  plain.  "  No  man  hath  seen 
God  at  any  time.  The  only-begotten  Son 
which  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father  hath 
declared  Him."  You  can  imagine  all  men 
near-sighted,  never  having  seen  a  star,  and 
then  the  world  coming  in  procession  to  the 
telescope  and  revealing  the  new  heavens, — 
the  sidereal  heavens  made  plain  to  a  near- 
sighted world.  This  is  just  what  happened  in 
Jesus  Christ.  Men  had  not  any  view  of  God 
that  would  satisfy  until  they  learned  it,  appre- 
hended it,  had  it  made  plain  in  terms  of  a 
human  life.  That  was  the  lens  through 
which  God  showed  Himself  to  the  eye  that 
searched  for  Him. 

In  "Many"^r  God,"  I  think  we  get  a  very 
simple  definition  of  religion, — that  it  is  a  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  the  will  of  God.  Here 
I  outline  what  I  mean  by  the  teaching  of  re- 
lieion.  Take  this  definition,  which  seems 
to  me  enough,  that  religion  is  a  passionate  de- 
votion to  the  will  of  God.  To  teach  religion 
is  not  to  teach  its  definitions.  When  a  clergy- 
man a  little  while  ago  said  to  me,  "  I  cannot 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught  ?    245 

conceive  how  reHgion  can  be  taught  without  a 
catechism  or  a  formulated  statement,"  I  said  to 
him,  "  Cannot  you  teach  cooking  without  a 
cook-book  ?  Cannot  you  teach  carpentry  with- 
out a  treatise  upon  mechanics  ?  Cannot  the 
living  soul  that  knows  a  thing  show  how  it 
knows  it  without  defining  the  terms  in  which  it 
knows  it  ?  Do  I  require  a  chemical  analysis 
of  my  luncheon,  in  order  to  know  that  it  is 
palatable  ?  Serve  up  your  dinner  with  a 
chemical  analysis,  and  see  how  much  you  would 
eat  at  the  end  of  the  week.  You  would  dread 
the  chemical  analysis  more  than  you  would 
want  the  dinner.  The  prescription  is  not  the 
medicine  ;  the  theory  is  not  the  fact ;  the  de- 
finition is  not  religion.  We  give  the  definition 
of  religion  as  "  a  passionate  devotion  to  the  will 
of  God," — but  in  this  religion  does  not  appear 
as  having  a  definition  of  what  God  is,  nor  how 
the  will  is  related  to  Him,  nor  what  we  mean  by 
devotion, — whether  saying  prayers  or  praying, 
whether  reciting  a  creed  or  living  it.  It  does 
not  require  a  definition  of  the  primary  passions 
of  life  to  know  what  a  passionate  devotion  to 
the  will  of  God  is.  There  are  four  volumes  of 
metaphysic  enclosed  in  that  sentence  :  the  first 
having  to  do  with  the  primary  passions  of 
human    nature ;    the  second  with  the  rites  of 


246  One  World  at  a  Time 

religion  as  formed  in  devotion  ;  the  third  with 
the  ethic  of  the  soul ;  and  the  fourth  with  a 
theologic  statement  of  the  theory  of  God. 
You  might  have  all  that  in  the  terms  of  every 
seminary  in  the  world  that  teaches.  ..what  it 
calls  a  "  body  of  divinity  "  ; — that  is,  it  lays 
upon  the  dissecting-table  the  dead  form  of  Re- 
ligion, and  calls  the  class  round  for  a  clinic, — 
you  might  have  all  that,  and  be  just  as  free 
from  all  religion  as  some  of  the  seminaries 
are.  One  man,  at  least,  should  be  kept  in  the 
faculty  of  every  Theological  School  who  has  an 
enthusiasm  for  the  pastoral  office,  and  knows 
the  souls  of  men  in  the  active  work  of  the 
ministry.  Why  ?  Because  it  is  absurd  for  a  the- 
ological school  to  be  made  up  simply  of  aca- 
demic instruction.  That  is  necessary.  You 
must  have  the  study  of  church  history  for 
the  sake  of  the  history  and  not  for  the  sake  of 
the  church.  You  must  have  all  that  goes 
with  the  whole  curriculum  of  a  well-equipped 
theoloo;ical  school.  But  there  must  be  in  all 
such  schools  human  souls  that  have  a  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  the  will  of  God.  I  do 
not  say  that  definition  is  not  useful.  I  do 
not  say  that  when  you  want  to  draw  a  line 
around  things  you  have  not  to  define  them  ; 
but  I  shall  never  be  convinced,  I    think, — at 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught  ?    247 

least  in  my  present  condition  of  rationality, — 
that  the  survey  of  a  field  is  a  substitute  for 
the  crop  you  can  get  out  of  it.  So  we  must 
have  something  else  than  definition  in  the 
teaching  of  religion.  There  must  be  the 
statement,  as  I  have  said,  of  the  phenomena 
of  religion ;  as,  for  instance,  in  thinking  of 
the  Being  of  God.  Let  me  use  that  as  an 
illustration.  It  would  seem  that  "He  that 
cometh  to  God  must  believe  that  He  is."  That 
is  fundamental.  It  is  not  important  at  all  as 
to  the  fact  of  religion,  but  it  is  as  to  the 
character  of  it,  what  God  seems  to  him  to  be 
like.  "He  that  cometh  to  Him  must  believe 
that  He  is  "  ;  or  else  he  is  going  on  a  fool's 
errand.  He  is  not  going  at  all ;  he  is  simply 
wandering  around.  He  is  simply  a  lunatic 
outside  bounds.  "  He  that  cometh  to  God 
must  believe  that  He  isT  What  I  maintain,  as 
I  have  said,  is  that  the  fact  of  religion  is  not 
dependent  upon  his  determining  what  God  is 
exactly  like. 

An  elder  in  a  recent  session  of  the  Presby- 
terian Assembly  rose  in  his  place  and  made 
this  speech  :  "How  do  we  know  that  God 
could  save  the  race  ?  We  do  not  know.  If 
God  had  said,  '  I  propose  to  save  the  whole 
human  race,'  Satan  would  have  risen   in  his 


248  One  World  at  a  Time 

place,  there  and  then,  and  would  have  said, 
'  That  is  just  what  I  told  Eve,  Ye  shall  not 
surely  die.' "  Now,  I  can  believe  easily,  that 
he  was  a  good  man,  in  spite  of  this  foolish 
statement.  The  statement  is  foolish,  because 
it  is  a  bit  of  mythology  flung  into  the  face  of 
the  twentieth  century.  It  is  based  upon  the 
first  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Job,  where  God 
is  represented  as  an  Eastern  sovereign,  a  Shah 
of  Persia,  with  provinces,  outlying  districts, 
and  satraps  of  these  provinces  bringing  in 
their  reports.  So  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Book  of  Job  opens,  '*  Now  there  was  a  day 
when  the  sons  of  God  came  to  present  them- 
selves before  the  Lord,  and  Satan  came  also 
among  them."  Then  the  book  goes  on  to  say 
that  they  made  their  various  reports,  and  the 
Being,  the  Shah  of  Persia,  is  represented  as 
saying,  "There  is  a  man  in  my  province,  Job. 
Hast  thou  considered  him  ?  for  there  is  none 
like  him  in  the  earth,  a  perfect  and  upright 
man."  Then  they  have  a  dialogue  about  Job  ; 
and  Satan  proposes  certain  tests  of  Job's 
goodness.  He  says,  "  He  is  a  rich  man,  a 
prosperous  man  ;  but  if  his  goods  are  taken 
away,  he  will  renounce  thee."  And  his  wealth 
was  taken  away  ;  but  Job  blessed  God.  Then 
Satan  said,  "  Lay  thy  hand  upon  his  body,  and 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught?   249 

he  will  renounce  thee."  So  Job  was  afflicted  in 
sore  ways  ;  and  he  still  blessed  God.  In  the 
midst  of  it  all  he  said,  "  I  know  that  my  Aven- 
ger liveth  ;  and  that  he  shall  stand  up  at  the 
last  upon  the  earth  ;  and  after  my  skin  hath 
been  thus  destroyed,  yet  from  my  flesh  shall 
I  see  God,  whom  I  shall  see  for  myself,  and 
mine  eyes  shall  behold,  and  not  another."  This 
was  the  mold  in  which  the  Presbyterian  elder's 
thouQfht  about  God  was  cast. 

The  effort  of  this  good  man  to  say  what 
God  was  like  did  not  invalidate  the  fact  of 
religion  in  him  at  all.  It  only  impaired  his 
usefulness  as  a  teacher  of  theology.  In 
other  words,  a  man  out  of  the  Middle  Ages 
cannot  have  a  chair  in  a  theological  school 
in  the  twentieth  century  with  advantage  to  the 
school.  Here  was  a  group  concerned  with 
the  revision  of  the  Westminster  Confession, 
and  for  that  reason  the  thinof  that  was  said 
was  perfectly  apt  to  the  occasion  ;  for  one 
form  of  mythology  was  matched  with  another. 
It  is  the  illustration  of  what  Froude  says  so 
splendidly  :  "  Reason  is  no  match  for  super- 
stition ;  one  great  emotion  must  be  expelled 
by  another."  What  God  is  like  is  subject  for 
debate.  What  God  is,  and  that  God  is,  is  sub- 
ject for  the  soul's  apprehension  and  adoration. 


250  One  World  at  a  Time 

In  order  to  the  teaching  of  religion,  then, 
in  any  real  way,  there  is  but  one  thing  to  be 
considered,  namely,  the  giving  of  direction 
to  the  temper  and  spirit  of  the  taught.  It 
involves  a  crystalline  sincerity.  That  is  the 
first  step.  A  crystalline  sincerity,  an  un- 
clouded eye  to  see,  an  ear  hospitable  to  every 
voice  that  has  anything  to  say  that  means 
good, —  this  implies  a  teachable  spirit.  Un- 
willingness to  be  convinced  is  the  beginning 
of  perdition  to  the  soul.  There  must  be  an 
open-minded  hospitality,  so  that  light  may 
enter  into  the  mind. 

Two  other  elements  enter  into  the  condi- 
tion of  this  directed  mind  ;  not  only  that  it 
shall  be  teachable,  willing  to  know,  not  only 
that  it  shall  be  sincere,  with  clear  vision, 
when  the  thing  to  be  known  is  presented ; 
but  there  must  be  in  it  earnestness.  Men 
demand  easy  religion  !  Nothing  else  is  easy 
in  life.  Ask  the  man  of  whom  you  speak  as 
having  life  on  his  own  terms,  whether  life  is 
on  his  own  terms  or  not.  Ask  him  what  anxi- 
eties corrode  his  mind,  what  solicitudes  per- 
plex him  ;  what  embarrassments  impede  him. 
He  will  tell  you  there  is  no  life  that  is  easy, 
and  it  ought  not  to  be.  As  in  the  natural 
world  the  struggle  is  the  process  of  survival, 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught?    251 

so  in  the  moral  world  it  is  struggle  of  soul 
that  saves. 

Finally,  there  must  be  an  unselfish  devotion. 
Without  teachableness  we  have  no  advance. 
Without  crystalline  sincerity  we  have  no  self- 
knowledge.  Without  earnestness  we  have 
no  momentum.  Without  unselfish  devotion 
we  have  no  usefulness.  Whatever  you  acquire 
in  the  name  of  religion  is  only  taken  to  your 
mint  to  be  put  into  the  current  coin  of  the 
realm.  It  must  go  into  circulation  thereafter. 
It  is  the  thing  men  trade  in  and  need  for  the 
sustenance  of  life. 

The  teaching  of  religion  depends,  most  of 
all,  upon  the  impact  of  one  nature,  upon  an- 
other. Over  and  over  again  I  hear  the  teach- 
ers in  Sunday-school  say,  "  I  remember  a 
teacher  whom  I  had  in  my  early  boyhood  or 
girlhood.  I  cannot  remember  more  than  her 
name.  I  do  not  remember  anything  she  ever 
taught  me  ;  but  somehow  or  other  she  made 
me  believe  that  God  was  real,  and  that  God 
was  known  to  her."  That  is  the  impact  of 
one  spiritual  nature  on  another.  That  is 
essential  in  the  teaching-  of  religion.  The 
most  brilliant  discourse  is  as  vain  as  the  most 
flippant  language,  unless  the  discourse  carries 
with  it  the    sense  that  the    man  has    contact 


252  One  World  at  a  Time 

with  divine  realities.  When  Bunsen  lay  dy- 
ing, looking  into  his  wife's  face,  he  said,  'Tn 
thy  face  have  I  seen  the  Eternal."  That  was 
what  John  meant  in  his  Gospel  about  making 
God  plain  in  terms  of  human  flesh.  You 
remember,  in  Robert  Elsmere,  how  the  dying 
workman  called  Robert  to  his  side  and  told 
him  how  he  had  made  him,  by  the  very  aspect 
of  his  life,  believe  in  God  ;  that  is  to  be  the  re- 
vealer  of  God  in  terms  of  human  life. 

Many  persons  have  been  thrilled  to  hear 
Robert  Collyer  tell  how,  after  he  had  come 
into  the  Unitarian  ministry,  he  went  back  to 
Yorkshire,  and  preached  to  the  congregation 
in  which  his  aged  mother  sat,  who  had  never 
heard  him  preach  since  the  days  when  he 
was  a  Methodist.  She  took  his  arm  going 
home  from  church,  and  gave  it  that  little  hug 
that  mothers  will,  and  said  to  him,  "  Ah,  Rab- 
bie  !  I  didna  understand  much  thee  said,  and 
what  I  did  understand  I  didna  like ;  but  I 
believe  in  thee."  That  is  the  real  thing.  "  I 
believe  in  thee  ! "  That  is  what  Paul  meant 
when  he  said,  "  Whose  I  am,  and  whom  I 
serve."  That  is  what  he  meant  when  he  said, 
'*  Faithful  is  he  that  called  you,  who  also 
will  do  it."  That  is  what  he  meant  when  he 
said,  "  All  things  work  together  for  good  to 


How  Can  Religion  Be  Taught?   253 

them  that  love  God."  That  is  the  final  con- 
viction in  the  teaching  of  religion.  It  is  the 
impact  of  a  believing  soul  upon  the  soul 
which  seeks  to  believe. 


CHAPTER   XII 

HOW   TRADITIONAL   RELIGION   MAY 
BECOME  PERSONAL 

JESUS  among  his  people  stood  in  the 
midst  of  institutions  hoary  with  age,  him- 
self a  youth,  vital  with  spiritual  consciousness. 
They  quoted  against  his  enthusiasm  the  age- 
long antecedents  of  their  cult,  and  he  chal- 
lenged them  to  show  that  they  were  operative 
in  the  achievements  of  the  spiritual  life. 

The  process  is  historic,  as  well  as  individual, 
in  which,  through  all  time,  the  passage  has 
to  be  made  from  the  speculative  reason  to  the 
practical  reason  before  we  are  sure  of  any  one 
thing.  The  speculative  reason  is  the  field  of 
our  gymnastic  ;  the  practical  reason  is  the 
arena  of  our  conflict  and  the  opportunity  of 
our  work.  This  was  what  Jesus  continually 
contended  for.  The  woman  of  Samaria,  a 
woman  without  character,  said,  in  absolute 
devotion  to  the  orthodoxy  of  her  religion, 
which  had  not  touched  her  life  in  any  way  : 

254 


Personal  Religion  255 

"  Our  fathers  worshipped  in  this  mountain, 
and  ye  say  that  in  Jerusalem  is  the  place 
where  men  ought  to  worship."  That  is  tradi- 
tional religion  asserting  itself  through  the  lips 
of  an  immoral  person,  and  absolutely  correct 
in  its  differentiation  between  "  this  mountain  " 
and  that,  between  this  "worship"  and  that; 
and  the  reply  of  the  Master  of  the  art  of  living, 
the  simple  man  whose  chivalry  did  not  even 
abash  her,  nor  send  her  other  than  repentant 
away,  was  :  "  Neither  in  this  mountain  nor  yet 
in  Jerusalem  shall  men  worship  the  Father. 
The  Father  seeketh  them  to  worship  Him  who 
worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth."  It  is  the 
passage  from  traditional  religion  to  personal 
experience.  It  is  the  problem  which  Luther 
solved  when,  toiling  on  his  knees  up  the 
great  stair, — a  stair  built  on  the  treads  and 
uprights  of  traditional  religion — he  heard  a 
voice  in  his  ear  that  said  :  "  The  just  shall 
live  by  his  faith."  He  arose  from  the  toiling 
on  his  knees  to  the  activities  of  his  life,  turned 
his  back  upon  the  monastery  and  upon  the 
cloister,  and  entered  into  marriage  and  work 
and  beneficence  as  a  man  and  not  a  priest. 

For  religion  in  its  last  analysis  is  personal, 
not  traditional.  It  is  traditional  in  that  it 
may  be  carried  across  from  age  to  age.      It  is 


256  One  World  at  a  Time 

traditional,  for  instance,  in  the  Philippine  Isl- 
ands, where  every  question  yet  of  personal 
religion  and  of  national  ethics  is  to  be  solved. 
The  friars  own  the  land,  and  the  people  do 
not  own  themselves.  It  is  traditional  in  those 
great  Catholic  belts  of  Southern  America,  in 
which  every  punctilio  of  service  is  observed, 
but  where  civilisation  languishes  for  want  of 
humanness.  It  is  observed  if  you  would  go 
to  an  audience  with  the  Pope  of  Rome.  You 
would  be  inquired  of,  not  whether  you  be- 
lieved in  the  personal  sanctity  of  Leo  XIII., 
in  which  we  must  all  in  large  measure  believe 
who  know  of  the  devotion  and  sympathies 
of  this  beautiful  old  man  ;  but  you  would 
be  asked  by  the  master  of  ceremonies  if  you 
understood  "the  etiquette  of  the  occasion." 
The  etiquette  of  the  occasion  does  not  mean 
that  you  shall  accept  the  vicar  of  the  Most 
High  as  a  person  charged  with  a  message 
to  you.  It  means  that  the  women  must  go 
veiled,  and  the  whole  company  must  kneel 
when  the  Pope  enters  his  audience  chamber, 
and  if  he  is  gracious  enough  to  present  his 
signet  they  must  kiss  it.  This  is  tradition- 
alism. 

So,  throughout  the  whole  world,  the  effort 
of  man  has  been  to  put  himself  into  actual 


Personal  Religion  257 

relations  with  the  universe,  and  he  does  so 
when  he  leaves  the  pages  of  the  past  in  which 
that  effort  is  inscribed.  He  reads  there  the 
history  of  religion,  the  history  that  followed 
its  traditions,  that  is  made  up  in  part  of  what 
it  did  and  in  part  of  what  it  dreamed  ;  but  no 
man  finds  his  adjustment  to  the  universe  in 
the  pages  of  history.  To  recite  trippingly 
upon  the  tongue  some  creed  of  the  past  may 
be  most  useful,  as  putting  you  in  line  with  the 
continuity  of  religious  thought.  But  it  is 
quite  possible  to  say  the  things  impossible  to 
believe,  and  a  useful  exercise  goes  on  in  all 
sensitive  souls  in  the  recitation  of  the  forms 
of  faith,  —  a  translation  out  of  the  archaic 
phraseology,  reciting  the  phraseology  of  the 
past  in  the  terms  of  present  emotion  and  of 
present  faith.  So  that  when  a  clergyman  of  a 
New  York  church  was  asked,  "  How,  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  you  believe  in  the  essential 
humanity  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  are  you  able 
to  recite  the  Apostles'  Creed  ?  "  he  answered  : 
"  I  say  to  myself,  '  who  is  said  to  have  been 
conceived  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  born  of  the 
Virgin  Mary.'  "  That  parenthetic  process 
goes  on  all  the  time.  Into  that  interval  of 
the  parenthesis  dropped  the  sincerities  of  his 
life.       Into  the  chasm  in  his  thinking  dropped 


258  One  World  at  a  Time 

the  directness  of  his  mind  ;  for  the  passage 
from  traditionahsm  to  personal  religion  must 
be  made,  no  matter  where  you  start.  You 
may  start  at  the  antipodes,  of  the  Catholic 
Church  upon  the  one  side,  and  at  very  liberal- 
ism upon  the  other  ;  but  still,  what  relation  do 
you  own  to  the  Infinite  ?  That  is  the  problem 
set  for  all  of  us.  It  is  the  source  of  the  soul's 
struggle.  It  is  the  major  premise  in  all  the 
soul's  argument  with  life. 

I  do  not  for  one  moment  lose  sigfht  of  the 
thought  side  of  religion  ;  but  the  thought  side 
of  religion  cannot  be  a  thought  quoted  with- 
out ceasing  from  intellectual  eminence.  Em- 
erson said,  very  well,  that  next  to  him  who 
uttered  a  great  thought  was  the  man  who 
quoted  it.  But  to  be  perpetually  in  quota- 
tion is  to  be  ever  in  process  of  rehearsing 
tradition.  The  tradition  preserves  that  which 
constitutes  the  background  of  our  thinking  ; 
it  is  not  thinking  itself.  It  was  thought  ;  but 
it  is  not  thought,  you  perceive.  Whatever 
creed  is  stated,  the  moment  any  man  says, 
"  Credo,"  "  I  believe,"  he  is  in  active,  intel- 
lectual, moral,  spiritual  process  ;  but  the  next 
man  who  says,  "  I  believe,"  and  quotes  him, 
does  not  say  the  same  thing  at  all.  He  says  : 
"  I  believe  what  the  other  man  believed,"  and 


Personal  Religion  259 

he  is  one  remove  away  from  that  warm  centre 
of  conviction  which  in  the  first  man  made  the 
statement  of  his  faith.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  creed  called  the  "  Creed  of  Nicsea,"  be- 
gun in  325  in  the  Council  of  Nicsea,  and 
formulated  and  completed  in  380  in  the  Coun- 
cil of  Constantinople.  Examine  that  state- 
ment. I  do  not  intend  to  controvert  any 
element  in  it.  I  believe  profoundly  that  the 
enunciation  of  it  saved  the  Christian  Church, 
as  I  could  prove  to  you  by  a  most  simple 
process.  When  it  was  declared  that  the  Son 
was  of  the  "same  substance"  with  the  Father, 
the  first  utterance  was  made  which  modern 
thought  expresses  in  the  integrity  of  all  life 
and  the  essence  of  all  life.  It  was  a  wonder- 
ful declaration.  Not  Arius,  but  Athanasius 
saved  the  Church.  But  when  the  modern 
man,  dusty  with  his  business,  brushes  himself 
off  and  goes  to  church,  or  shifts  his  business 
suit  for  his  holy  cloak,  and  goes  into  the  place 
of  prayer,  and  begins  to  recite  the  Creed  of 
Nicsea,  he  is  not  at  all  conscious  of  the  strug- 
gle that  went  to  the  making  of  it,  —  how,  in 
that  convention  of  ecclesiastics,  blows  were 
struck  and  oaths  were  uttered,  and  anger 
was  hot  for  the  integrity  of  the  faith.  He 
is  trying  to  put   into  his  Occidental  way  of 


26o  One  World  at  a  Time 

thinking,  into  his  Western  mind,  a  philosophic 
statement  produced  largely  under  Asiatic  con- 
ditions ;  for  of  the  318  bishops  and  ecclesi- 
astics that  constituted  the  Council  of  Nicsea, 
only  some  twelve  or  fifteen  were  from  the 
West  of  Europe.  It  is  a  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion that  he  is  reciting,  and  you  can  imagine, 
as  he  stands  there  and  recites  the  Nicene 
Creed  without  much  thought,  able  sometimes 
to  remember  what  it  really  is,  and  most  often 
reading  it  from  the  book, — as  he  stands  there, 
you  can  imagine  the  surprise  of  all  the  mar- 
tyrs that  died  for  the  truth,  and  all  the  angels 
that  attended  their  flight  from  earth,  to  see  a 
modern  man  reciting  a  philosophic  formula,  of 
which  he  has  never  weighed  one  syllable  per- 
haps in  all  his  days,  and  calling  it  an  exercise 
of  personal  religion  !  It  is  quite  possible  for 
him  to  make  that  personal,  —  quite  possible 
for  him  to  apprehend  what  Athanasius  was 
struggling  for,  and  enter  into  that  struggle  of 
soul.  If  he  can  believe  it,  and  adjust  it  to  his 
life,  and  make  it  practical  in  his  common  af- 
fairs, he  has  solved  one  problem  in  religion,  — 
he  has  passed  from  traditionalism  to  personal 
experience.  But  you  have  not  in  that  creed, 
nor  in  any  other,  so  far  as  I  know, — a  state- 
ment of  personal  religion.     I  do  not  know  in 


Personal  Religion  261 

one  of  them  anything  that  can  be  parallelled 
with  the  Beatitudes,  which  deal  with  life  and  its 
blessedness.  The  creeds  deal  with  thought  and 
its  accuracy  ;  and  between  the  blessedness  of 
life,  the  beatitude  of  experience,  and  accuracy 
of  statement,  there  is  all  the  difference  be- 
tween the  rosy  child  that  is  so  full  of  life  your 
arms  can  scarcely  hold  him  while  3^ou  love 
him,  and  the  placid  and  statuesque  perfection 
of  the  dead. 

"  The  soul  divines  what  is  divine,"  said 
Tertullian  in  one  of  his  better  moments. 
"  The  soul  divines  what  is  divine."  And  our 
modern  statement  of  it  is,  "  That  is  inspired 
which   inspires." 

I  am  not  for  one  moment  to  be  un- 
derstood as  declaring  against  the  traditions 
of  religion.  I  simply  say  they  are  not  relig- 
ion's self.  They  are  useful,  as  the  museums 
are  useful,  as  the  history  of  the  literature  of 
the  world  is  useful  ;  but  between  the  living 
creature,  that  looks  at  the  preserved  specimen 
in  the  museum,  and  the  fossil  itself  are  all  the 
diameters  that  we  mean  by  life, — so  wide  that 
they  cannot  be  compared  by  their  measure- 
ment together.  The  living  child,  wondering 
before  the  great  restored  fossil  creature,  that 
after  being  exhumed  has  been  set  up   in  its 


262  One  World  at  a  Time 

skeleton  as  it  was  in  antediluvian  days, —  the 
living  child  standing  wondering  at  it,  is  greater 
than  the  thing  at  which  it  looks  ;  because  all 
history  —  is  implicit  in  the  child,  and  this  other 
has  been  left  a  remainder  from  the  past.  The 
skeleton  dug  up  and  a  history  in  process  are 
things  so  different  that  one  can  scarcely  com- 
pare them  together. 

One  grows  weary  of  the  people  who  have 
the  theory  of  things  ;  —  the  great  dramatic 
critic  who  cannot  write  a  line  that  anybody 
can  play  on  the  stage  ;  the  great  musical  critic 
whom  you  would  dismiss,  that  you  might  hear 
an  old  darky  sing  with  his  mellow  voice,  into 
which  generations  of  tears  have  gone,  and  the 
agony  of  his  people  ;  a  minister  of  religion, 
whom  you  are  glad  to  detect  in  any  useful 
employment  ;  you  follow  him  up  with  detec- 
tive exaction,  and,  beyond  the  theories  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion  which  he  may  have,  you 
at  last  discover  him  in  the  practice  of  the 
things  that  he  preaches  ;  in  all  these  instances 
we  find  the  passage  from  traditionalism  to  what 
is  personal  and  immediate. 

What  do  we  mean  by  personal  religion  ? 
Religion  is  a  passion,  a  devotion  to  the  will 
of  God.  It  does  not  much  matter  what  the 
god   is   called,  or  how  his  will   is  conceived, 


Personal  Religiion  263 


'& 


or  what  degree  of  passion  is  maintained,  so 
that  the  soul  have  passion,  devotion  to  the 
will  of  God.  For  it  is  our  relationships  that 
matter,  not  the  definition  of  what  those  re- 
lationships should  be.  Better  give  one's  self 
absolutely  to  worship  than  to  be  most  emi- 
nently wise  about  idols,  and  go  from  one 
pedestal  to  another  until  one's  fancy  is  pleased 
with  a  god.  That  is  not  worship ;  that  is 
not  devotion  ;  there  is  no  passion  in  that. 
That  is  fooling  with  an  aesthetic  sense  in  the 
name  of  a  great  process  in  human  life.  It  is 
for  this  reason  that  Calvin  and  Theodore 
Parker  are  equally  admirable  in  their  attitude 
and  relation  to  that  which  they  believed, 
Theodore  Parker  said  he  agreed  with  Calvin 
perfectly,  for  Calvin's  God  was  his  devil. 
Still,  the  relation  was  exact  between  the  being 
whom  Calvin  worshipped,  and  whom  we  abhor 
in  his  description  of  him,  and  the  being 
whom  Theodore  Parker  worshipped  and  whom 
we  adore  in  his  description.  It  is  relation 
that  is  essential  ;  and  the  relation,  being  vital, 
carries  worth  with  it.  Take  the  commonest 
relation  of  life.  Marriage  is  an  instinct  based 
in  the  physical  nature  of  the  race.  Marriage 
is  a  passion  in  which  an  instinct  is  kindled 
until  it  flames.      Marriage  is  an  ideal  in  which 


264  One  World  at  a  Time 

all  the  basilar  instincts  are  subordinated  and 
sublimated  at  once  to  the  service  of  the  soul. 
Marriage  is  a  beatitude,  a  sacrament.  The 
Church  of  Rome  is  right  in  calling  it  one  of  the 
seven  sacraments.  It  is  a  sacrament  in  which 
stand  hand  in  hand  the  man  and  woman,  and 
they  bow  themselves  before  God  unashamed. 
This  one  word  that  I  have  used — relation — 
makes  the  difference  from  first  to  last. 

So  religion  is  a  passionate  devotion  to  the 
will  of  God.  That  is  definition  enough,  I 
think.  In  what  sense,  then,  is  it  personal  ? 
I  have  already  intimated  to  you  that  every 
tradition  clustered  around  some  warm-hearted 
faith.  The  aberration  from  that  centre  of 
summer  in  the  soul  was  when  intellectual  ac- 
curacy was  substituted  for  an  experience  of 
life.  That  is  the  great  heresy.  The  world 
has  never  entertained  any  heresy  which  for 
hurtful  influence  is  like  that ;  and  that  lies 
at  the  root  of  insistence  upon  traditionalism. 
The  comical  little  catechism,  quoted  in  a  New 
York  newspaper  a  while  ago  as  having  been 
put  out  by  the  Anglican  Catholic  clergy, 
represented  everybody  who  is  not  in  what 
they  call  the  "  ark  of  safety,"  with  the  other 
animals,  as  in  the  great  wash  of  the  deluge. 
It  is  a  very  small  vessel   for  so  large  a  sea. 


Personal  Religion  265 

and  so  many  people  will  be  drowned  around 
it,  that  I  think  the  waters  will  be  clogged 
up  as  in  the  Sea  of  Sargasso.  The  heresy  of 
it  is  that  it  insists  that  tradition  is  authority  ; 
that  accurate  statement  is  salvation  ;  that  con- 
formity to  a  form  of  words  has  saving  power. 
That  is  the  great  heresy  wherever  it  is  found 
in  the  history  of  the  world, — that  exactness  of 
definition  is  reality.  I  have  many  a  time 
called  your  attention  in  these  pages  to 
this  fundamental  distinction  which  we  must 
maintain  or  be  lost  in  our  thinking  :  that  defi- 
nition is  never  the  thing  defined.  The  pre- 
scription is  not  even  the  drug,  and  the  drug 
is  not  the  cure  ;  and  yet  to  be  wise  in  pre- 
scriptions makes  an  apothecary,  who  must  yet 
take  his  own  drusfs  to  be  cured.  Definition 
is  not  mathematics,  ranging  from  the  simplest 
primary  question  of  addition  and  so  on  clear  to 
higher  mathematics,  where  most  of  us  get  lost ; 
and  yet  the  wise  wren  builds  her  nest  and 
broods  her  young,  and  the  spider  knows  how 
large  the  door  of  his  little  hole  in  the  ground 
must  be  to  serve  as  a  trap  to  pull  after  him 
when  he  goes  in,  and  "  nature  loves  the  num- 
ber five,"  and  does  not  know  why, — all  inno- 
cent of  mathematics,  because  the  definition  is 
not  the  reality, — the  reality  is  the  cause  of  the 


266  One  World  at  a  Time 

definition.  In  the  wide  spaces  of  Arabia  the 
mathematical  science  was  born,  and  the  heavens 
lent  their  aid  to  the  calculations  of  him  who  in 
algebra  and  its  kindred  sciences  sought  to  con- 
stitute a  science  under  the  light  of  the  stars. 

The  definition  is  never  the  reality.  That  is 
the  vanity  of  the  people  who  say  :  "  I  am  a 
Channing  Unitarian,"  or,  "  I  am  a  Theodore 
Parker  Unitarian."  Phillips  Brooks  had  the 
right  idea  about  that.  When  somebody  was 
asked  by  him  why  she  attended  Trinity 
Church,  this  simpering  woman  said  :  "I  do 
not  know  why,  but  I  suppose  I  am  a  Brooks- 
ite."  And  he  said :  "  Good-day,  madam." 
That  was  the  only  answer.  A  Channing  Uni- 
tarian, if  he  would  read  Channing,  would 
discover  that  he  was  the  most  vitally  and  im- 
mediately religious  of  men.  He  was  dealing 
with  things  as  he  found  them,  and  seeking  to 
help  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  He  was  dealing 
with  questions  from  Napoleon  in  his  greed  of 
conquest  to  slavery  in  its  enormity  of  guilt  ;  he 
dealt  with  the  common  vices  and  virtues  of  the 
time  In  which  he  lived,  In  a  way  that  showed  the 
living  soul.  That  Is  the  way  to  be  a  Channing 
Unitarian, — to  have  your  soul  alive  to  every 
blessed  and  Infernal  thing  in  sight,  and  seek  to 
change  the  nether  side  of  life  to  Its  beatitudes. 


Personal  Religion  267 

This  must  be,  for  the  reason  that  all  rela- 
tions are  personal.  The  moment  the  human 
consciousness  arrived  at  the  concept  of  per- 
sonality, it  set  up  personal  relations  with  the 
universe.  If  you  stand  at  all — as  you  must  if 
you  are  aware  of  modern  thought — for  the 
natural  function  of  religion,  you  are  dealing 
with  a  part  of  your  nature  just  as  much  as 
when  you  are  learning  the  laws  of  light  as 
related  to  the  eye,  or  the  laws  of  sound  as  re- 
lated to  the  ear.  You  are  dealing  with  a 
function  of  your  daily  life  in  religion.  Over 
and  over  again  men  say  to  me  :  "  I  have  at  last 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  I  must  attend  to 
the  religious  side  of  my  nature."  Well,  that 
late  conclusion  does  them  credit,  for  the  re- 
ligious side  of  their  nature  has  been  knocking 
and  knocking,  and  asking  attention.  Let  it  be 
attended  to  !  It  has  been  whispering  ques- 
tions to  them  that  nothing  else  answered,  rais- 
ing conflicts  in  their  minds  that  nothing  else 
could  allay,  presenting  conditions  of  human  life 
as  they  arise  year  by  year  In  terms  of  gladness 
and  sorrow  so  that  nothing  else  could  adjust 
them  ;  and  at  last  they  are  attending  to  what  has 
been  there  all  the  time, — the  religious  side  of 
their  nature.  I  say  to  you  with  all  the  serious- 
ness of  which  I  am  capable,  that  you  cannot 


268  One  World  at  a  Time 

neglect  it  without  dwarfing  your  powers,  and 
that  that  relation  is  a  personal  relation  ;  for 
the  reason,  if  I  may  make  this  plain  by  an 
illustration  or  two,  that  all  the  achievements 
of  life  come,  sooner  or  later,  in  their  highest 
terms,  out  of  a  conscious  adjustment  of  the 
person  to  the  nature  of  which  he  seeks  to  in- 
quire. For  instance,  shut  the  eye  away  from 
light  long  enough,  and  it  is  blind.  Keep  the 
arm,  as  the  Indian  ascetic  does,  lifted  toward 
heaven  long  enough,  and  it  is  paralysed. 
Stand  with  Simon  Stylites  on  his  pillar,  with 
his  rope  girdle,  long  enough  still,  and  decay 
sets  in  ;  and  yet  the  ascetic  is  doing  it  in  the 
name  of  a  personal  relation.  What  I  de- 
sire to  bringf  home  to  the  mind  of  the  reader 
with  all  possible  directness  is  this  :  That  when 
a  human  being  gets  down  before  God  in  prayer, 
or  stands,  as  our  Oriental  friends  would  in 
prayer — no  matter  what  the  attitude,  if  the  soul 
is  going  out  toward  its  source  of  life,  is  seeking 
its  springs  in  the  Being  that  made  it — when  that 
transpires  the  relation  is  as  real,  as  vital,  and 
as  natural,  as  when  the  eye  is  delighted  with 
the  first  kiss  of  light,  or  the  ear  is  delighted 
with  the  first  matin  song  of  birds,  or  when 
your  child  crawls  into  your  bed  in  the  morning 
and  snuggles  down  ;  that  is  an  act  of  personal 


Personal  Religion  269 

devotion  to  you  out  of  whose  being  it  came, 
and  into  whose  arms  it  is  folded  for  safety  and 
infantile  delight.  I  believe  in  God,  but  that 
is  not  enough.  I  must  believe  God.  "  I  know," 
says  the  apostle,  not  "  i^i  whom  I  have  be- 
lieved," but  "  I  know  whom  I  have  be- 
lieved." That  is  personal  relationship.  When 
we  speak  into  the  ear  of  the  Most  High,  we 
are  not  crying  into  the  void.  All  definitions 
of  philosophy  are  inapt,  incomplete.  The 
relationship  between  the  soul  and  God  is  a 
relationship  that  must  be  personally  realised, 
personally  believed.  No  knowledge  of  tradi- 
tion is  a  substitute  for  it,  and  no  delight  in 
tradition  can  take  its  place.  And  nothing  that 
any  human  soul  can  do  but  the  abandon  of 
itself  unto  the  Infinite,  can  be  called  in  any  sense 
the  passage  from  traditional  religion  to  religion 
that  is  personal.  For  religion  is  not  a  theory, 
but  an  experience.  Religion  is  not  a  guess, 
but  a  certainty.  There  are  theories  mani- 
fold, but  they  are  not  itself.  There  are 
guesses  multiform,  but  they  are  not  itself. 
The  reality  is  never  the  thing  described. 
The  soul  is  an  explorer  for  reality,  and  its  ex- 
ploration is  its  experience,  and  its  experience 
is  its  life.     This  is  religion. 


.COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 

0035521813 


<s^^ 


